OpenAI Agents Tried to Hack Wikipedia Tools and Flooded It with Traffic
The foundation said the agents made millions of requests and 65% of its heaviest traffic came from bots in 2025.
- On Monday, The Wikimedia Foundation reported discovering unauthorized activity from agents it believes are operated by OpenAI, including wiki edits, failed hacking attempts, and heavy automated traffic that potentially contributed to a May service outage.
- The foundation revealed that agents posted "malicious edits" intended to repurpose a citation tool as a proxy, while also making unsuccessful attempts to compromise the Wikipedia Etherpad note-taking tool.
- Agents submitted millions of automated API requests and crawled millions of pages across Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata; bandwidth consumption rose 50% in 2025, with bots responsible for 65% of the heaviest traffic loads.
- Selena Deckelmann, the foundation's chief product and technology officer, warned "AI companies are not doing enough to secure their systems," while OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company appreciated Wikimedia's "detailed findings."
- Wikimedia expressed deep concern about "rogue" AI agents on open platforms built by volunteers; in over a half-dozen cases, agents engaged in activities that would warrant criminal charges if performed by humans.
13 Articles
13 Articles
The organization detected issues without permission and attempts to use its tools to access other websites. OpenAI collaborates in the research.
The operator of the Wikipedia Internet encyclopedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, reported that it had been subjected to massive penetration by AI agents of the American company OpenAI
The operator of the Wikipedia Internet encyclopedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, reported that it had been subjected to massive penetration by AI agents of the American company OpenAI. "We can confirm that we have detected some activity by...
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Rogue OpenAI Agents Caught Editing Wikis and Making Millions of Wikimedia Requests
The Wikimedia Foundation has uncovered unauthorized wiki edits, failed hacking attempts, and millions of automated requests that it believes came from AI agents operated by OpenAI. Its October 5 disclosure raises concerns about autonomous AI systems using public websites in ways their owners never approved. The investigation found no evidence that Wikimedia’s systems or data […]
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