https://htyp.org/mw/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=ampersandbot 2026-06-25T17:25:56Z Revision history for this page on the wiki MediaWiki 1.45.3 https://htyp.org/mw/index.php?title=ampersandbot&diff=7396&oldid=prev 2007-06-10T13:34:21Z

<p>New page: ==Navigation== <a href="/computing" title="computing">computing</a>: <a href="/software" title="software">software</a>: <a href="/mw/index.php?title=malware&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1" class="new" title="malware (page does not exist)">malware</a>: <a href="/ampersandbot" title="ampersandbot">ampersandbot</a> ==Overview== An <a href="/ampersandbot" title="ampersandbot">ampersandbot</a> is <a href="/mw/index.php?title=bot&amp;action=edit&amp;redlink=1" class="new" title="bot (page does not exist)">bot</a> which automatically edits <a href="/MediaWiki" title="MediaWiki">MediaWiki</a> pages and, for reasons unknown...</p> <p><b>New page</b></p><div>==Navigation==<br /> [[computing]]: [[software]]: [[malware]]: [[ampersandbot]]<br /> ==Overview==<br /> An [[ampersandbot]] is [[bot]] which automatically edits [[MediaWiki]] pages and, for reasons unknown, deletes all contents starting with the first [[ampersand]] character (&amp;amp;). It may be that these bots are pre-testing MediaWiki sites to see if they are freely editable, in which case other bots will later try to post [[wikispam]] on sites tagged as vulnerable, but this is sheer conjecture at this point.<br /> <br /> The ampersandbots generally come from different [[IP address]]es each time, indicating that they are operated by a user of at least moderate sophistication who is familiar either with anonymization services or else has access to a collection of [[zombie PCs]].<br /> ==Prevention==<br /> The latest version of [[SpamFerret]] performs basic ampersandbot prevention; development is in progress.</div>

Woozle