Shadowing Practice: The Man Who Stole MySpace | Samy - Learn English Speaking with Video

one of our biggest flaws collectively as people is our tendency

to underestimate the power we have on others without even giving a second thought we make choices

that produce dire consequences that we never even anticipated

and with the internet giving us access to more information than

we ever thought was possible we must now be more mindful of this than ever before.

And on October 4th, 2005, a bored teenager would unknowingly change online history.

On that day, over 1 million people across MySpace logged onto their accounts and discovered that their profiles had been hijacked,

but not in the way that you think.

They hadn't been hacked

and their passwords were still safe yet somehow their web pages

had been visibly changed nearly everybody on the platform was now

suddenly friends with a mysterious user named sammy with text even appearing on their pages

which declared sammy is my hero not too long after sammy's profile just disappeared.

And then a little after that, so did all of MySpace.

The world's most popular social network was now gone, leaving millions of people around the world completely puzzled as to what just happened.

In just under 24 hours, Sammy, also known as the Space Hero Worm, had become become the fastest growing computer virus of all time.

So what exactly happened?

Given that the payload of this worm was pretty much harmless, you may think that its impact on everyday traffic across the web would be more or less benign,

but that's actually not true.

Although its capabilities make it seem quite silly, the Sammy worm's effects on the internet are still with us today.

They not only serve as a lesson in how we should be more mindful of patching big security vulnerabilities

but they also serve as a reminder for just how much influence the everyday person has even

when making seemingly trivial decisions this is the story of sammy

and the kid who accidentally stole myspace speaking of myspace i also need my space to play some war thunder

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At least on the planes in War Thunder, you don't have a baby crying in the seat next to you wait did you really write

that that's stupid what it was funny anyway go check out war thunder

and play among your friends the story of the sammy virus begins with our namesake

and beloved my space friend sammy kamkar even at his young age sammy was quite the gifted programmer

when he was 10 years old he received his very first computer

and logged on to the world wide web for the very first time

and the very first thing he did well started searching online

for the x -files he even found himself in a chat

room asking hey who wants to talk about the x -files the only response he got was get out

when he refused another response followed you have 10 seconds to get out lo

and behold 10 seconds later sammy's brand new computer was faced with a blue screen of death but rather than getting angry, Sammy was just fascinated.

Somebody on the other side of the world was able to gain full control of his computer without his permission.

He wanted to do the same thing.

sammy had soon learned that this person used a program called winnuke 95

which exploited a vulnerability found in windows

that allowed people to effectively crash anyone's computer as long as

they knew their ip address microsoft would quickly patch this issue

and the program would no longer work but if people could create hobbies

or even entire careers out of exposing bad code in a

piece of software what was stopping him from being one of them sammy's new computing

and online presence was dedicated to reverse engineering code and programming, from finding vulnerabilities in games like Counter -Strike to,

well, releasing exploits to those vulnerabilities in Counter -Strike and having the actual game developers get involved.

But now it's 2005.

He's 19 years old, has dropped out of high school, and runs his own tech company

that would be worth around 46 million dollars with nine years

of programming experience under his belt all his friends were now

on this relatively new insanely popular website called myspace .com sammy had been reluctant on joining right away

but eventually all the peer pressure caught up to him i mean everyone else was doing it

so he went ahead and created his first myspace account and immediately did what he does best, searched the site for exploits.

Sammy felt that Myspace was, in some respects, a bit lackluster.

Like the fact that you could only upload 12 photos?

That's it?

Well, he eventually figured out a workaround to this, on top of other things, such as being able to change his relationship status to, say, in a hot relationship,

an option that was not a part of MySpace's drop -down menu.

These changes were initially very subtle, but as he continued exploring, he soon realized just how much control he truly had at his disposal.

To get nothing more than a laugh out of his friends, Sammy decided to create a script,

where anyone who visited his MySpace page would automatically add him as a friend, and then add text to their page which said,

but most of all, Sammy is my hero.

It was harmless, it didn't delete anything or obtain personal information, it just made a funny joke.

But he decided to make it even more interesting than that.

Now not only would anyone who visited Sammy's page add him as a friend, it would also add this script to their page.

So anyone who visited that person's page would also add sammy as their friend

and have this script added to their profile and

so on sammy had just accidentally created a computer worm

and he thought that maybe a dozen people at the most would add him as a friend

but by the time he woke up he now had over

10 000 new friends on his profile all of them declaring

him as their hero he even received direct messages from people asking why he was on their profile

and thanks to the beauty of exponents in just a couple

of hours this number would snowball to 50 000 75 000

at the end of the day sammy's friend list was now

at 1 million naturally he starts to completely panic though deleting

the code from his profile doesn't prevent the other users from

continuing to spread it he tries to shut down his profile but he can't even do that for another 24 hours.

He decides to send an anonymous email to MySpace explaining how to remove the worm, but he never gets a response.

But eventually, his profile would get taken down before the end of the day.

100

But then so would all of MySpace.

101

With nothing more than some pretty simplistic code, Sammy shut down an entire online ecosystem used by millions of people and corporations,

102

and he had been a user for hardly one day.

103

Just a couple of months before the Sammy virus entered the picture, MySpace had just been purchased by News Corp, a division of Fox, for $580 million.

104

In other words, MySpace was not small potatoes, it was a very big deal.

105

So how on earth did such a huge

106

and obvious vulnerability go completely unnoticed all this time to the

107

point where even a 19 year old could exploit it it's

108

not like the sammy worm was the first did the internet

109

really not learn their lesson from the multiple devastating online attacks

110

that had preceded it well yes and no the interesting thing about this vulnerability

111

is that it was a byproduct of something

112

that was actually considered a feature on myspace the ability to customize your profile using CSS.

113

This was a bit of a common trend throughout the internet in the early 2000s, and as social media grew later on in the decade, its prevalence did as well.

114

To a lesser extent, even the old YouTube channel layouts had a similar setup.

115

This allowed people to create very customizable, unique pages, many of them terrible to look at.

116

This was very common before smartphones became a thing.

117

It could be argued that MySpace was the site that started this trend, but at the same time, MySpace was special.

118

It was a social network akin to something like Facebook, but it was also more than that.

119

MySpace was your entire personality on a web page.

120

You could choose your profile's colors, change the background, you could even have music play on your page.

121

It wasn't just a name and a profile picture.

122

You could change your web page into any style that fit your mood.

123

But not only that, on MySpace, you could customize things even further by writing your own code.

124

You weren't confined to the digital walls that are seen in typical profile settings things, you could do pretty much whatever you want.

125

Many people actually learned HTML and CSS and became professional programmers because of Myspace,

126

as they would spend all their time putting together a profile perfectly tailored to their desired online persona.

127

So how does this all tie in to the Sammy worm?

128

Well you probably know where this is going, but things do take a bit of a turn.

129

I say you could do pretty much whatever you want, because there were some limitations.

130

Sammy executed the worm through something known as cross -site scripting.

131

Not to be confused with the CSS we just talked about, the acronym for this term is XSS.

132

Developers at MySpace were aware that giving users such flexibility would be abused in some way, shape, or form.

133

So they went ahead and blocked things like JavaScript from being used within the CSS coding settings.

134

But Sammy found a loophole.

135

Rather than exploiting MySpace, he exploited his web browser.

136

Browsers at the time were actually very lenient when it came to interpreting broken code.

137

So if you wrote a JavaScript command with a few formatting issues here and there, the browser would still read it the way it was intended.

138

This was done so that websites that may not have been coded properly could still load without issues.

139

So, for example, if Timmy sucks at writing HTML, he can still have his website show up on the internet.

140

As long as the browser knows what he meant to write, it doesn't have to be perfect.

141

So what Sammy did was he wrote his JavaScript code in a certain format that was intentionally slightly incorrect.

142

This format would be too unique to be picked up by Myspace's filters,

143

but coherent enough for a browser to understand the intent of what he was writing and therefore execute it anyway.

144

Browsers like Firefox and Opera did not have this interpretation feature, but Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Apple's Safari did.

145

This was the reason why many websites that would load properly in Internet Explorer

146

and Safari did not load properly in Firefox and Opera.

147

So naturally, Internet Explorer and Safari appeared smarter, and therefore gave Internet Explorer the majority browser market share.

148

But when almost all the users on MySpace are using Internet Explorer, it's clear why events unfolded the way that they did.

149

So it wasn't really MySpace's fault, it was the web browser.

150

The only thing MySpace could do was now add this new style of formatting to this filter list

151

so it was ultimately the responsibility of web browsers to just, I don't know, read code the way it was supposed to be read.

152

But even with putting all that aside, the reason the worm was able to exist also coincides with the attitudes of the internet that were present in 2005.

153

In addition to mainstream websites giving users more customizability,

154

people were still learning about the seemingly unlimited capabilities of computer viruses and this even applies today

155

there are currently ways of hacking into entire corporations and causing destruction

156

that haven't been discovered yet many people were hyper aware of the destructive worms made in the past

157

but it takes time for most people to collectively learn more about it it is not something

158

that happens overnight

159

but is instead gradual after myspace shut down to remove the worm the site of course went back up

160

and things went back to normal in fact

161

so did sammy's life he never heard anything from myspace

162

or the authorities no matter how much he looked over his

163

shoulder his life went on as usual until six months later

164

when the fbi showed up with search warrants in front of his brand new car at his apartment.

165

They began searching through all his things and seized all his electronics.

166

Sammy was now facing prison time, but eventually entered a plea agreement to pay $20 ,000, do 720 hours of community service,

167

three years of probation, and could only use one computer that didn't have access to the internet.

168

During that time, He just lived life, the kind of life that was typically enjoyed before computers were invented.

169

And when his sentence was finally over, the first thing he did was buy a computer at the Apple store, went on the web for a few minutes,

170

and then just turned it off and went to hang out with his friends.

171

Sammy was quite the introvert whose main connection with people was through a computer screen.

172

And although his sentence was hard at first, it gave him the opportunity to be more outgoing

173

and meet some fascinating people in the real world this worm taught Sammy to literally go outside

174

and touch grass CSS as an art form on social media sites eventually started to die out

175

and a big reason for this was you guessed it mobile

176

devices these types of web pages did not look nearly as glamorous on phones

177

and tablets as much as they did on desktop and laptop computers

178

and as the market share of mobile devices grew over the years and demand for mobile -friendly sites enter the picture,

179

CSS -styled webpages were less needed and ultimately fell out of fashion.

180

It's easy to point fingers at the Sammy worm for causing this, but really, it was the smartphones.

181

So what did the Sammy virus give us today?

182

Well, for one, the entire ordeal taught its creator how to use hacking ethically.

183

Rather than using exploits to cause havoc,

184

intentional or not, instead he can find exploits and programs and showcase to the developers what could happen if they go unnoticed.

185

Sammy's career is now dedicated to helping organizations find and patch vulnerabilities present within their software.

186

In addition, he would also become one of the main whistleblowers behind exposing big tech for collecting and tracking their users' data.

187

In 2010, he would create an API known as Evercookie, a cookie that is meant to be extremely difficult to delete.

188

This was created to illustrate just how capable websites can be in collecting your data, even if you go out of your way to avoid it,

189

posing a huge issue on the matter of privacy.

190

The Sammy Worm also existed during a time when online security was lacking, not just on MySpace, but in general.

191

Around 80 to 90 % of sites at the time were vulnerable to some kind of cross -site scripting attack.

192

10 years later, that number had dropped to 47%.

193

If the Sammy worm hadn't existed, who knows what this number would be at.

194

So yes, the Sammy virus was a lot more than just some practical joke.

195

It spread awareness about the vulnerabilities of many seemingly secure platforms while indirectly pointing out the unethical practices of many large corporations.

196

It serves as a cautionary tale for how anyone with just a computer

197

and some code can impact the digital lives of millions of people, some of whom he'll meet, and those he'll never meet.

198

There is no reason to feel insignificant.

199

Everything you do has some kind of effect on the world.

200

It is the strongest power that you have.

201

So just remember to be careful with how you use it

202

and make sure it's for the greater good because you might just accidentally shut down an entire website.

203

Don't forget to download War Thunder using my link in the description to get access to some awesome content and plain fun.

204

Thank you so much for watching.

205

If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe and click the notification bell so that you never miss a future video.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 205 sentences and 3018 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:39. The speaker talks at a natural 162 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

sammy /ˈsæmi/ (verb) — To moisten (animal skins) with water.
worm /wɝm/ (noun) — A generally tubular invertebrate of the annelid phylum; an earthworm.
thunder /ˈθʌndɚ/ (noun) — The loud rumbling, cracking, or crashing sound caused by expansion of rapidly heated air around a lightning bolt.
exploit /ˈɛksplɔɪt/ (noun) — A heroic or extraordinary deed.
virus /ˈvaɪ.ɹəs/ (noun) — A submicroscopic, non-cellular structure that consists of a core of DNA or RNA surrounded by a protein coat, that requires a living host cell to replicate, and…
browser /ˈbɹaʊ.zəɹ/ (noun) — One who or which browses.
script /skɹɪpt/ (noun) — A writing; a written document.
accidentally /ˌæk.sɪˈdɛnt(ə)li/ (adverb) — In an accidental manner; by chance, unexpectedly.
delete /dɪˈliːt/ (verb) — To remove, get rid of or erase, especially written or printed material, or data on a computer or other device.
developer /dɪˈvɛləpɚ/ (noun) — A person or entity engaged in the creation or improvement of certain classes of products.
seemingly /ˈsiːmɪŋli/ (adverb) — As it appears; apparently.
vulnerability /ˌvʌln(ə)ɹəˈbɪlɪti/ (noun) — The state of being vulnerable; susceptibility to attack or injury, either physical or emotional; the state or condition of being weak or poorly defended.
naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/ (adverb) — In a natural manner.
everyday /ˈɛvɹiˌdeɪ/ (adjective) — Appropriate for ordinary use, rather than for special occasions.
format /ˈfɔːɹ.mæt/ (noun) — The layout of a publication or document.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

shut down (verb) — To close, terminate, or end; to stop operating, either permanently or temporarily.
get out (verb) — To leave or escape.
go ahead /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ (verb) — To proceed with; to begin.
go on /ˈɡoʊˌɒn/ (verb) — To continue in extent.
check out (verb) — To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
die out (verb) — To become extinct.
drop down (verb) — To sail, move, or row down a coast, or down a river to the sea.
figure out (verb) — To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 21 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, can't, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thunder /ˈθʌndɚ/, therapist /ˈθɛɹəpɪst/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: destruction /dɪsˈtɹʌkʃən/, interpretation /ɪnˌtɜːpɹəˈteɪʃən/, notification /ˌnoʊtɪfɪˈkeɪʃn̩/, showcase /ˈʃoʊˌkeɪs/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/
Long words — get the stress right: accidentally /ˌæk.sɪˈdɛnt(ə)li/, developer /dɪˈvɛləpɚ/, vulnerability /ˌvʌln(ə)ɹəˈbɪlɪti/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, capability /ˌkeɪ.pəˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like sammy, worm, thunder.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	had been hijacked · been hacked · was faced
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	kid who accidentally · anyone who visited
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has evolved · has dropped · haven't been discovered

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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