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MySpace to be co-opted into Month of Bugs

But who's actually being played?

An unknown duo is promising to devote the entire month of April to disclosing bugs on MySpace, a preferred networking site for teens and the hackers and pedophiles who scam them.

The pair - who go by the names Müstaschio and Mondo Armando - plan to begin posting their findings on April 1 in what may be an attempt to lampoon a wide variety of communities. Obviously among them is the MySpace site itself, which over the past year has become a playground for hackers who use Javascript to win friends and spam people.

As they put it on their site: "The purpose of the exercise is not so much to expose MySpace as a hive of spam and villainy (since everyone knows that already), but to highlight the monoculture-style danger of extremely popular websites populated by users of various levels of sophistication."

But they also take a jab at the more self-important members of the hacker elite, who are fond of 30-day campaigns that have a tendency to be bigger on hype than actual substance. Speaking on MOMBY - short for "Month of MySpace Bugs, Yuss!" - they say: "If it ends up being just as lame as the Month of Apple Bugs, then we haven't really missed the mark. If it's funnier, then great. If it kills this Month of Whatever fad, then hurray for everyone, it's over."

As MySpace has become the favorite destination for teens looking to hook up to get their freak on, the News Corporation-owned site has also demonstrated a vulnerability to scammers who employ a combination of scripts and good old-fashioned graft. Last week, a researcher discovered the site was hosting a Trojan that attempted to exploit PCs using unpatched versions of QuickTime. Two of the more dramatic examples of abuse on the site came from a user named Samy, who scooped up millions of friends using a script he wrote and a banner ad that infected more than a million users with spyware.

But MOMBY's last laugh may befall your humble reporter - and his many colleagues who have already written about the endeavor. The event is scheduled to begin on April Fools Day. ®

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