HN has a fairly effective system to only allow downvotes by 500 reputation points. But it allows upvotes to everyone. So a Sybil attack for upvoting is possible.
Is it considered white-hat to try this myself?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack
Contact the email address on https://news.ycombinator.com/security.html
There's already algorithms in place against voting rings and similar vote behaviour. I've seen spam submissions with 50 upvotes and none was counted, the story never reached the frontpage or 2nd .. 10th page.
Yes
> Would those upvotes count?
Nah. The details are not clear because it's part of the secret sauce, but the system has some voting ring detectors. Also, users smells most of that attempts and will flag the post and notify the mods.
> Is it considered white-hat to try this myself?
Ask the mods. The contact link is at the bottom.