Last but not least: ETH vs. MusicStar

Thanks to his fellow students, ETH student Martin Steiner was for a short time in first place out of 2392 in the casting video competition for the third MusicStar season of Swiss television SF. As reported by Kleinreport on October 26, ETH students launched "a flashmob-like, spontaneous mail action" that influenced the video voting in Martin's favor. The Baz and the Tagesanzeiger reported already the following day about a "hacker attack" on the SF casting show. Neither the Baz nor the Tagesanzeiger mentioned that the hackers were young ETH students.As security against such attacks, it is not the video with the most votes that wins, but the one with the best average score, SF spokesman Urs Durrer told Ringier's free newspaper Heute. He added that those responsible at SF had the situation under control. The manipulated votes had been deleted, Durrer explained. Martin had fallen back to 299th place after this correction. But as the Blick reports today Tuesday, Martin was already back in the lead yesterday Monday. Now SF has moved Martin back to 326th place and complained in writing to ETH, but the MusicStar hype can no longer be stopped at ETH, according to Blick.
Every increase in SF's security levels only goads the young ETH students even more, he said. Durrer assured Blick that there was no computer manipulation in the final results and that the voting results were secure. At least until the next ETH attack. "You can't take MusicStar's online voting seriously in terms of security," one student told Blick. Whether SF or ETH wins the battle and whether Martin will be allowed to compete in the final round of the MusicStar casting on November 19 will be revealed on November 2, when online voting ends.