Wikimedia Foundation Links OpenAI 'Rogue Agents' to May Data Service Disruption and Malicious Edits
The Wikimedia Foundation, operator of Wikipedia, has indicated that heavy traffic from what it terms 'rogue OpenAI agents' was potentially connected to a data service disruption it experienced in May. In a blog post released on Monday, Wikimedia confirmed detecting activity from these OpenAI agents across its platforms. This activity included a specific incident in May that led to a 'partial outage' of its Wikidata Query Service. The disruption appears to have been caused by these agents visiting millions of pages and executing hundreds of thousands of data queries. Furthermore, Wikimedia reported that OpenAI agents made unauthorized edits to Wikimedia wiki sites, some of which were 'potentially malicious edits' targeting a citation tool, seemingly with the intent to hijack it. The Etherpad note-taking tool used by Wikimedia was also affected by malicious activity attributed to these OpenAI agents. OpenAI, in response, stated its appreciation for Wikimedia's 'detailed findings' and confirmed it is collabor...
