More than being the first one you have to be the original innovator behind the script. This is the reason why every good marketer would tell you to atleast know your way around programming languages.
I am not saying I was the innovator behind this script - but I for sure was one of the first replicators. The moment I saw that first CPAlead offer pop-up in my facebook from a "Answer this riddle" question sent to me by a friend (obviously auto-invited me) - I knew what I had to do next. I studies FBML for 4 straight days - I researched Javascript - I researched Javascript decryption - Understood the basics and pretty soon had more than 170 different pages using the same script. Banged more than $35k from CPAlead in less than 4 weeks. I still have more than 27 pages with 350k+ Likes that I often use to pump my whitehat sites.
If you're even remotely known to the hacking world - you, for sure, would've heard of 0-day (read zero-day) or 0-hour (read zero-hour) exploits. These are exploits that are posted in the most elitist and the most private hacking communities. The Zero refers to the time since when the exploit has been discovered.
These exploits can be huge - and are often patched within a couple of hours. They may relate to Gmail accounts, Yahoo accounts, Facebook accounts, Anti-Virus tricks, Credit Card details, vBulletin, phpBB, Other shop scripts and god knows what not.
Now the leetest of all hackers take the time to exploit these themselves, and then post about it on their "apparently close knit" community, thereby allowing everyone to look and learn from it. But more often that not newbie script kiddies take these exploits and go on a hack rampage just to get their names enlisted on sites like Zone H. These attempts donot go unnoticed and the companies to whom the exploit is related (who by the way have full time staff working over this) patch the exploit in no fucking time.
Same is the case here, a simple code/method is released and BAM! you have newbies spamming the internets with it! Sure as hell they do manage to get exploited.
