Users can cast their votes for Time's Person of the Year until December 4. However, some experts managed to "crack" the voting system and decided to put Miley Cyrus at the top.
To vote, users must log in with their Facebook or Twitter. However, a couple of developers named Gains and Marek have discovered a way to bypass the authentication and automatically enter a large number of votes for anyone they want.
The two developers told The Daily Dot that they had developed code in C# and Ruby that allowed them to vote on behalf of any Facebook user, without their knowledge, simply by using their Facebook ID numbers.
The ID numbers, which are public, have been entered into a code, allowing Gains and Marek to automatically enter a large number of votes.
Initially, the hackers thought of making the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers, the winners. However, they later decided on Miley Cyrus.
Shortly after the automated voting tool was deployed, Miley Cyrus moved from 15th place to 5th place. The number one spot was taken by Edward Snowden, who is supported by the Anonymous community.
Meanwhile, 4chan users – who in 2009 made sure that the site's founder Christopher Poole (Moot) took first place – also began creating code to make sure that Snowden would win.
When The Daily Dot published this article, Miley Cyrus was in 4th place with 3.9% of the vote. However, at the time of writing, the former Disney celebrity had a 29% lead, followed by Snowden with 14.8%.
The fact that the poll was hacked again is no surprise. In 2012, hackers breached the system to make sure North Korean leader Kim Jong-un would win.
In the end, Time editors will choose the person of the year, so this doesn't necessarily mean Miley Cyrus will win. However, it does show how easily online voting systems can be hacked.
