[wp-hackers] "The Matrix Has You" easter egg

Chris Williams chris at clwill.com
Sat Oct 23 16:43:33 UTC 2010


Thanks to the incredible evangelism of WP a relatively new and inexperienced web master sets up a WP blog.  It has the "famous 5-minute install".  Couldn't be easier.

Then as we saw with the OP, he or one of his users stumbles upon a rather frightening easter egg, and he/they become alarmed that they've been hacked.  WP's reputation as a reliable and easy platform is sullied as they spend time searching the internet to find a resolution.  Only to find that it was "a joke", installed as part of the program from the original bona fide sources.

Your solution is to suggest they write javascript to disable this?  Really?  How was this person to know about this risk in the first place?  How many more potentially scary and alarming easter eggs do you expect them to magically know about and prevent?  What level of Computer Science expertise is required to manage a WP install, beyond the "5-minute install"?  And isn't your solution like locking the barn door after the horse is gone?

________________________________
From: Ryan Bilesky <rbilesky at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [wp-hackers] "The Matrix Has You" easter egg

If you don't like the easter egg use javascript to prevent both radio
buttons for any given revision from being selected at the same time.
Problem solved.




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