Google Hammer
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Content Warning! |
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Google Hammer was a shock site and malicious variant of Meatspin created in 2012.
Content
Upon opening, the Flash content for Meatspin and its accompanying music begin autoplaying continuously in an endless loop. Simultaneously, a barrage of script-generated pop-ups appears on the screen, trapping the user and preventing them from closing the window. Because these sudden dialogue boxes are designed to display the song's lyrics, they are populated with lines from You Spin Me Round (Like a Record), presented as follows:
- "Awww, don't leave yet! The fun has just begun!"
- "Sing along with me!"
- "You spin me right round, baby"
- "right round like a record, baby"
- "ONE MORE TIME"
- "THAT NEVER HURT DID IT"
These dialogue messages originally came from Rickrolling.com, which at one point was flagged as a malicious website and developed a poor reputation.[1]
Another browser payload overloads Shockwave Flash using a custom SWFObject script. This causes non-Internet Explorer browsers to crash, while Internet Explorer triggers dialog boxes, alters the window title upon exit, and shrinks the browser window to a quarter of its size in one of the four screen corners.
The title page for Google Hammer jokingly states that "Marketing Information So Good It'll Spin Your Head Right Round.".
A meta description accompanying the fake tagline also read:
"Your resource for diving headfirst into internet marketing the right way. Once you experience Google Hammer, you'll wonder how you ever survived without it."
Infoslash.net
An earlier version of Google Hammer was linked to Infoslash.net, which was a typosquatting site designed to mimic Slashdot through the clever wordplay of "Info Slash (dot) net."
Infoslash was significantly more popular than Google Hammer, with mentions appearing in old discussion forums, Reddit and Facebook. On March 10, 2009, the Steam group "Team Infoslash" listed the website as its official homepage.[2]
top5.lupee.com.br/top.htm
The same script featured on Infoslash.net is found on a Brazilian mirror site top5.lupee.com.br/top.htm, where the captions and song lyrics were written into Portuguese through a loop of dialog boxes. The first seven alert boxes, each accompanied by a count of 100 that adds every time the user repeatedly tries to close them, can be read as follows:
- Fica mais um pouquinho .... (Stay just a little longer....)
- Vamos conta... (From 1 to 100?)
- De 1 a 100 ? (Or from 100 to 1?)
- Ou de 100 a 1 ? (Ah, I know!)
- Ah Já sei! (Let's start from 1...)
- Vamos Começar de 1... (Ah, I know!)
- Go! Go! GO! (Go! Go! GO!)
In fact, the index page also loads the same content and script as 'top.htm'.[3]
Makemoniesonline.com
Earlier, a variation of Infoslash appeared on a Meatspin mirror called Makemoniesonline, though it was entirely non-malicious. It is alleged that harmful applications could be downloaded onto their devices by the website, but this claim was debunked.
Parody lyrics referencing Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" appear on the website, accompanied by a sudden alert box reading "You've been Dick Rolled" as visitors browse. As noted by Urban Dictionary user Spyker44, this message displays when the site is closed right after the animated image pops up.[4] Additionally, phrases like "ONE MORE TIME" and "THAT NEVER HURT DID IT" were left as hardcoded syntax within Google Hammer's source code. The dialogue in the alert boxes from Rickrolling.com were replaced with an explicit copypasta version. Most notably, the chorus from the original song was modified to:
- "NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU ANAL"
- "NEVER GONNA LET YOU SPIN ME"
- "NEVER GONNA RUN AROUND AND PEE ON YOU"
- "NEVER GONNA MAKE YOU MOAN"
- "NEVER GONNA SAY COMO YA!"
- "NEVER GONNA FUCK YOUR BUM AND HURT YOU"
An early launch date of April 1, 2008, is believed for the site, as indicated by its early title page which once read "April Fools Bitches" and a sudden surge in popularity was experienced by Rick Astley's song on that exact same day. This spike was driven largely because the meme was used by YouTube for its April Fools' Day prank, while "Never Gonna Give You Up" was aggressively voted for by users across the web in a poll to become the New York Mets' official rally song.[5]
Although sometimes conflated with earlier browser-prank tools, the pop-up behavior and window-spam style of Makemoniesonline actually trace back to Sourmath which similarly inspired the content-replacement style used by Rickrolling.com.
Bouncecup.com
- See also: Sourmath
A mirror of 2 Girls 1 Cup with elements taken from the original Rickrolling.com. Bouncecup was also no different from Sourmath itself. Dialogue alert boxes reading "HELLO" and bouncing around the screen were spammed by it, all of which were apparently taken from an older version of the latter, as was indicated by its title "HELLO! - SourPatch.org replacement mixed with 2girls1cup 2 girls 1 cup." A video file named cupvid.flv,[6] which was sourced from cupvid.com by ShockSiteList.com, was also used.
References
Links
NOTE: The following shock sites contain pornography!
- web.archive.org/web/20120214133327/googlehammer.com
- web.archive.org/web/20090303152024/infoslash.net/
- Brazilian version: web.archive.org/web/20110609053837/top5.lupee.com.br:80/top.htm
- Rickrolling version: web.archive.org/web/20080405153048/makemoniesonline.com/
- 2 Girls 1 Cup variant: bouncecup.com