Hackers have violated the trust upon which Web 2.0 is building upon. They created a bogus page into the German edition of Wikipedia that had info about a new variant of the Blaster virus that was doing rounds on the net and provided a link to a download to remove the virus. However, the scam here was that the virus patch was the virus itself!

Then pretending to be from Wikipedia they went on to spam German computer users giving them directions on how to remove the new worm. However, as it happens more often than not, antivirus firm Sophos caught the trick and alerted Wikipedia resulting in the immediate removal of the page.

Now a new problem has arisen. This particular incident has been sorted out very quickly. However, another similar page may be created the nanosecond the previous one taken down given that Wikipedia allows anyone to create or edit pages.

This is the first such incident I have come across involving Wikipedia. A highly respectable Web 2.0 brand like it is in grave danger to lose credibility if such incidents take place on a regular basis. Already, a solution is being experimented on how to stop vandalism of Wikipedia articles. But this is more sinister and bad news for Wikipedia.

News: InternetNews.com