Hackers compete in global rankings

HACKERS ARE COMPETING to rise to the top of the Rankmyhack leaderboard, a listings web site designed to sort out arguments over who is the best hacker in the underworld.

The web site, which we came to via the Telegraph web site, was created "this summer" by a UK hacker going by the name of S0lar.

"Up until now, when you met another hacker on an IRC or forum, there was no way to indicate if that hacker had any skills what so ever," writes S0lar on the pages about section as he explains that the site will let you either welcome, or shun, any other hackers you meet on your travels.

"RankMyHack.com was built to give a clear indication of a hackers [sic] general abilities. It also serves the purpose of tracking a hackers hacking acheivements [sic] under their current alias allowing for other hackers to quickly establish the calibre of hacker they are talking to."

Of course it only serves to give an idea of the skills of those hackers that have signed up to be on the list, but so far the biggest hitter is Mudkip, who counts the Huffington Post among his conquests.

Points are awarded depending on the web sites hacked, and although Huffiington earned Mudkip the highest points currently on the board, 1,666,666, a hacker called Blackfan earned the second highest single point tally with a hack on Google.com that got him 1,500,000. A hacker called Rafael, who has only been active on the web site for around ten days is in second place overall.

Although large targets, such as government ones, have special bounties attached to them, S0lar seems to be keen to distance the challenges here from those carried out by other, perhaps more notorious hacker groups.

"The bounty section of this site was created in an attempt to focus the abilities of talented hackers against political and government forces that need to be put back inline," he writes in the About pages.

"This site isn't the next Anonymous or the next Lulzsec, this site is for every hacker that wants to use it regardless of country of origin, ethos, philosophy. Bounties just provide a polically constructive target for hacker's talents regardless of ability." µ