Hacker Says He Tricked Taco Bell Into Sending Him A PlayStation Vita. Skills ++

Some people have the skillz. A hacker who goes by the alias “Sinister” is claiming that he totally hacked the system man!, and convinced the Taco Bell Computer Brains to send him a PlayStation Vita.

Kotaku:

Using an automated program to generate codes for Taco Bell’s Vita contest-turned-debacle, a message board user named “Sinister” says he managed to win one of Sony’s new handheld systems. Writing in a post on the ExploitN forum last week, he uploaded pictures of the Vita and the letter he received from the organization that helped run the contest, Ventura Associates.

“Got with the same bot I used for the Vita sign up page,” Sinister wrote in the post, which has since been edited. (Kotaku obtained a screenshot of the original post.)

Taco Bell’s Vita contest has been plagued with issues since it debuted in January. Many contestants have contacted Kotaku over the past few weeks with reports that their codes were invalid or already used. Some contestants were informed that they won the contest only to find out later that they were misled because of what Taco Bell called “technical issues.”

On January 26, the hacker Sinister seems to have released his bot to other forum members. Other members of the message board have also said they used the bot to win PlayStation Vitas from Taco Bell.

This seems to corroborate Taco Bell’s claim last week that some contestants were trying to “defraud the system.” It would also explain the technical issues that convinced some non-winners that they won. Taco Bell has said it will run a second drawing in March for those misled winners.

Ah, hacker hubris! Couldn’t just win and keep that shit for yourself. No sir. No siree.