Hacker Sabotages 2012 Miss Hong Kong Pageant Votes

The 2012 Miss Hong Kong Pageant results are currently heavily contested. Carat Cheung’s (張名雅) victory is denounced, while second runner-up Tracy Chu (朱千雪) remains the online community’s true winner. TVB suspected that a hacker had immobilized its live voting system on August 26th, preventing the Hong Kong population to select the 2012 Miss Hong Kong winner.

With great fanfare, TVB announced earlier that this year’s pageant winner will be selected using new methodology. The judging panel would only select the top 3 candidates, while the Hong Kong population would place live votes in the final 10 minutes of the pageant to determine the placement results. As millions attempted to vote, TVB’s servers were unable to handle the traffic spike and crashed. TVB was forced to select the winner based on the judging panel’s decisions.

527 Public Complaints Filed

Hong Kong citizens were greatly disappointed by the failure of the live voting system. The Communications Authority received 447 complaints yesterday, while TVB received 80 complaints, resulting in 527 complaints filed over the 2012 Miss Hong Kong pageant. The public criticized TVB for poor planning, misleading audiences, and unfair pageant results.

Hacker Sabotages Miss Hong Kong Votes

In a press conference yesterday, TVB Business General Manager, SK Cheong (鄭善強), explained that abnormal voting patterns were observed on the evening of the pageant. Microsoft’s China’s Cloud Innovation Center (CCIC) had designed the Windows Azure application to handle up to 2.4 million votes in 10 minutes. The number of votes had soared even beyond the population figure of Hong Kong, which made it obvious that a hacker had broken through the security barriers to place bogus votes.

TVB will ask an independent auditing firm to examine the votes received on Sunday night. Due to suspected hacker activity, the findings may be reported to the police.

TVB will also need to devise a new system to select the winner of its prize giveaway of a new car. The car will be given away to an audience member within the next two weeks.

TVB Apologizes for Technical Failure

TVB Deputy Director of External Affairs, Tsang Sing Ming (曾醒明), apologized to the public for the technical glitch encountered during the live voting of the 2012 Miss Hong Kong pageant. Bowing his head, Mr. Tsang said, “This year’s pageant wished to implement new ideas. We did a computer test [for the voting system],  however there were still technical problems. It was unexpected that we would disappoint the audience. We mention earlier that if the live voting system fails,  the judges’ scores will be adopted.”

Despite cries of unfairness over this year’s pageant results due to technical voting glitches, Tsang Sing Ming said that the winner will not be re-selected. Mr. Tsang indicated that the pageant results will be final.

Source: Oriental Daily, ihktv.com

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Responses

  1. I like Tracy the most too. But oh well, at least she made it to top three. All three of them are pretty good.

  2. Btw Jayne, I believe you made a mistake in your vote of the week. It’s Tracy Chu, not Chung. xD

  3. Glad that Carat won. I don’t get why people want her to win so badly -___- she isn’t that pretty with her big teeth while she smile . Not judging herr but just stating fact. && plus her performance last night was alrightt , she wasn’t the best when she was giving out the answerr .

    1. Same. Tracy didn’t show her intelligence at all. Maybe she is only obedient and it’s the quality for Txb to promote her in the future. I doubt that she can act well because of her performance in the night is quite so-so at best.

      1. Yepp . Agreed . Carat show more of her intelligence than Tracy . && also Carat communication was good and better than Tracy . You can tell during the eating show with the male artists. She can really continue on with the convo about books with Jason lol . So intelligence.

    2. I think her performance was more outstanding. She showed her personality and quick wit more compared to the Robot Carat. She seemed like she know she was going to win because of her “background”.

      1. Honestly, it is futile arguing against those two. They contradict themselves – first they say that intelligence should be the main factor in determining MHK, and then they claim that Tracy is ugly, and Carat is way prettier.

        They also clearly think that “intelligence” can be determined through 10 minutes of speaking and answers to 5 questions in front of the camera. Furthermore, they basically claimed in the other thread “Miss Hong Kong winner” one, that all the viewers were a bunch of idiot savants and incapable of judging the contestants on anything other than looks.

        It’s not only frustrating to speak to ignorance but more so pathetic. Society is doomed if this is the level of “intelligence,” that is representative of the calibre of our world.

  4. to be fair ,can the result on vote get a recount ,is this a cheat,jayne?

    1. Y2k,
      The online votes allegedly surpassed Hong Kong’s own population figures, so it is difficult to determine the validity of the votes. In addition, the servers may have crashed before the full 10 minutes of voting took place.

      TVB’s backup rule was that the judges would vote if the live voting system failed, which it did.

      1. Unless TVB didn’t like the way the audience was voting, so they killed the server and faked the crash so that they could make the girl they wanted to win MHK.

        😛

        Ok, enough conspiracy theories, I’ll take off my tinfoil hat now =D

      2. Conspiracy theory only: TVB hired a hacker to create a congestion and deliberately crash the program LOL

  5. Ratings for Miss HK 2012 show: 27 points average…peaked at 32 points. The peak is where TVB servers fail!

    1. That’s TVB and Microsoft’s China’s Cloud Innovation Center work quality for you.

    1. Didn’t the series deal is offered to Carat by Eric Tsang, lolz?

  6. YEAH surrreeee TVB, a HACKER did it. Right…we believe you. lol why don’t you just own up that you guys messed up!

  7. So all these years, are the results rigged by internal TVB????

    1. agree maybe they did rigged it and maybe they did the same when KATE TUSI WINNED as well!!

      1. Kate is a lot prettier than the more recent winners like Toby Chan and Kayi Cheung as well as that really tall girl that won a few years ago…can’t remember her name. What happened to her anyways?

      2. Kate’s victory was well deserved. She shined among the contestants.

        @Gar: You mean El…weis something? The 183cm girl? She refused to fulfill the tasks of a miss and act siu jie so her title was revoked and Skye Chan replaced her.

      3. Fox:

        Thanks for the info.

        Title revoked?!?!?…lol…no wonder I don’t see her on TVB shows/series. Why would she bother entering into MHK if she didn’t want to take on the tasks of being the winner? You do something and you have to bear the consequences. Pathetic!

  8. uh yeah..sure, blame it on a hacker. Whatevs TVB.. we know your shady biz practices. What makes me mad is that I keep coming back to watch your channel though. ARGH!

  9. I’m completely disgusted and appalled by this whole process. When will these explanations and excuses end? Until everyone HK citizen is brainwashed?

    This is beyond whether Carat or Tracy should be crowned MHK, it is a slap in the face of democracy, ethic, and most of all integrity.

  10. Why do people care about the pageants anyway ? In the end, they all end up in the entertainment circle and act, therefore, why not just bag out their acting ?

    To be honest, their all pretty in their own way …

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