Wikipedia was in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise

"The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, reported a total revenue of $185.4 million for the 2023–2024 fiscal year (ending June 2024). The majority of this funding comes from individual donations, with additional income from investments and the Wikimedia Enterprise commercial API service."

(Unless this was satire and I missed it)

Re: Wikipedia was in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise

#8

Post by varun_ch » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

varun_ch wrote: post #4

Woah this looks like an old school XSS worm https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:RecentChanges?hidebo... I’ve always thought the fact that MediaWiki sometimes lets editors embed JavaScript could be dangerous.

Also, I’m also surprised an XSS attack like hasn’t yet been actually used to harvest credentials like passwords through browser autofill[0].

It seems like the worm code/the replicated code only really attacks stuff on site. But leaking credentials (and obviously people reuse passwords across sites) could be sooo much worse.

[0] https://varun.ch/posts/autofill/

Re: Wikipedia was in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise

#9

Post by 256_ » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

Here before someone says that it's because MediaWiki is written in PHP.

Re: Wikipedia was in read-only mode following mass admin account compromise

#10

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 05, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC

yabones wrote: post #6

[flagged]

[deleted]