From foundation-l about vulnerable password and its danger;

I expect most of us have much stronger password, but it is worthy to note ...

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com Date: May 8, 2007 4:34 AM Subject: [Foundation-l] Passwords To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org

[also sent to wikipedia-l]

For those who haven't yet heard, someone has been hitting en.wikipedia with what appears to be an attack looking for admins with weak passwords - "password", "password1", "[username]", etc. Then they go on a predictable spree; deleting the main page, mostly. I think we're down four so far...

It's possible someone might try this in the near future on other wikis - a lot of vandals tend to only go for en, but you never know, this one might be feeling multicultural!

This might be a good time to spread the word and ask your admins to consider checking their passwords are good and secure - after all, it's good practice anyway.

-- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk

_______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l