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. Creds: Oriental Daily
