The German version of Wikipedia has been hacked to spread malware to unsuspecting users. Will the sneaky ‘social engineering’ attacks of the hackers ever end?
While the offending pages on the German edition of Wikipedia were quickly removed once discovered, with all versions of the page permanently deleted, according to German news site Heise Online, the ease of which Wikipedia was hacked to be the source of malware has caused shockwaves around the world.
Cleverly using an article about the Blaster worm as cover, they modified the article and placed a link to a so-called ‘fix’, and urged people to download it. Of course, anyone doing so that didn’t have up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware protection would have found malware installed onto their machines, instead of malware being taken away.
To make matters worse, the German hackers then spammed the online German community, urging them to visit the Wikipedia site for information on getting rid of the W32.Blaster worm.
With Wikipedia still seen as an authoritative site, despite recent scandals, many could have easily been fooled into believing the link really did offer a download of value, instead of some nasty malware!
The ‘safe’ nature of the Wikipedia site would also have fooled many browser-based anti-phishing tools specifically designed to protect users from malicious websites.
It just goes to show, it’s getting harder to trust the sites we visit online, while emails we receive should always be suspect, even if they appear to come from a friend.
Wikipedia is one of my favorite websites. why don't they do something productive like attack Microsoft.
Source: http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/6921/52/
Source: 
Originally Posted by havingfun
I never have either~! I like M$, and of course I know the story of how Bill got a hold of MS-DOS...but still it's legit.
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