Wikipedia hijacked by hackers

Sophos has alerted internet users to a potential security risk that could be encountered by following advice posted on a Wikipedia page. The offending page was in the German edition of Wikipedia. Hackers had posted an entry detailing a new version of the 'blaster' worm, a piece of malware that in various guises has been causing security headaches globally for some time now. Included in the entry was a 'fix' for the new variant. But the supposed fix was in reality malicious code that would infect the computer of anyone who downloaded it. The hackers then also sent out an email to German users, supposedly from Wikipedia itself, alerting recipients to the entry. "The very openness of websites like Wikipedia - which allow anyone to edit pages - makes them terrific, but can also make them less trustworthy. In this case, it wasn't just that the information posted in Wikipedia's articles was misleading, it was downright malicious," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. "People should remember that if there really is a new threat on the internet, you're likely to hear about it first from the security companies, not an online encyclopedia," he continued. Wikipedia has erased the offending page, including cached versions. http://www.wikipedia.org/ http://www.sophos.com/

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