It's fixed now, and the IP is blocked. Not sure what the sluggishness you saw was. It was pretty zippy for me.
I wouldn't refer to this as a "hack" (you had me worried for a sec). A "hack" would be a case where someone circumvented the security measures in place. Since anyone can edit a wiki, they were doing something they were permitted to do under the security policy. "Vandalism" or "spam" are more appropriate descriptions. Anyway, thanks for the heads-up. I think it's all better now. Rob On Tue, 2005-08-30 at 14:05 -0400, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote: > Well, it has happened. > > The electorama wiki home page has been replaced by a list of spam links. > > Happened to me within about a week when I started the wiki for > BeyondPolitics.org. To avoid it, I went to a replacement wiki > (TikiWiki) that had user security: to write, users must log in and to > get an account, they must register and respond to a validation email. > Maybe there is an option with the wiki being used by electorama. > > That first time, I checked the access logs and found the source, and > complained to the ISP. I'm not sure what happened, but they did ask > for a copy of the log.... > > I also found the registrar for many of the domains advertised in the > list. I looked up the registration information and found fraudulent > phone numbers. I then complained to the registrar and the domain > registrations were cancelled. That cost them something, I'd venture > (unless they used fraudulent credit cards, which is unlikely since > the domains had been registered for some time.) > > I tried to restore the page from history, but the site is sluggish or > non-responsive. One of two things is happening: either the owner is > fixing it, or the spammer is busy replacing all pages. They use bots > to find open pages and replace them with spam. > > I'm generally opposed to the death penalty, but when it comes to > genuine spammers.... > > ---- > Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ---- Election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
