After one day of existence, Morty's Angels, a website that instructed visitors to rank female Northwestern students based on attractiveness, has been taken down.
As of 5:45 p.m. Saturday, users could no longer access the website, which displayed the message "There is no site deployed at this address." By 6:00 p.m., the web address redirected visitors to Google. Previously, the homepage presented pictures of two female students asking "Which one is hotter?" The site also listed an email address, and had a page which listed a leaderboard of the site's top 50 ranked students.
The University was notified of Morty's Angels and is currently investigating.
Earlier Saturday, McCormick junior Al Johri identified a weakness in the site's code and flooded the leaderboard with fake users. By Saturday afternoon, the leaderboard showed identical drawings of a man raising his middle finger. Instead of a name, every position on the leaderboard read "Fuck this website."
“I came across a vulnerability, essentially their ACL, which allowed me to make a bunch of users called ‘Fuck this website.,’” Johri said. “I created a bunch of people and then upvoted them to have 1000 percent on their leaderboard.”
Johri said that he first attempted to identify the creators of the website, but was unsuccessful. He said that he acted alone.
“I saw the website and I thought, ‘This is disgusting, I should do something about this,’” he said. “I’m very interested in general with using technology for social justice. I’m involved with ISBE Tech, which is essentially a group that does just that.”
Johri said he first heard about the website on the anonymous messaging app Yik Yak.
Morty's Cats, which instructs visitors to select the cutest cat and mimics the design and layout of Morty's Angels, remains online.