Topic on Project:Support desk

[RESOLVED] Wiki spam and related problems

7
Tanonero (talkcontribs)

Hello, I am not sure this is the right place since my question is not related to the domain Wikipedia.org, but I really need help and I hope to find some expert that can advise me. In order to get my PhD, I am running this wiki website (http://www.ichscotlandwiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page) created by Edinburgh Napier University. Since it has been recently assaulted by spam content because of the action of relentless bots which created thousands of fake pages, me and other two people with administrator access have started to block and prevent new creations of a lot of bots, so to stop the creation of automatic new pages and focus on the removal of the older spam. However, since yesterday all pages appear (as you can see even in the main page) as to don't have any text. They can't be even restored or modified as they wouldn't be in any section. I am asking here because neither I nor my partners have any idea to how to solve this problem. Is anyone able to figure out what happened?

MarkAHershberger (talkcontribs)

Strange. I haven't seen this sort of behavior before. Are there any scripts you executed or DB modifications that you made?

Could you try some debugging?

First, add

 error_reporting( -1 );
 ini_set( 'display_errors', 1 );

to your LocalSettings.php file and see if any errors are displayed. If none are, try enabling debugging and see if the file shows you anything.

Finally, you can try BlockandNuke.

Tanonero (talkcontribs)

Many thanks for your reply. No, I didn't executed anything, I have just done a repetitive action of blocking fake users and deleting pages. The problem is that all of us are only administrator of the website, so we don't have any access to the server (the website was created three years ago by other people that can't be reached, and then handed over to one of my partner, just before ending up in abeyance for a while); I guess that an access to the server is what I need to add "error reporting" (I am only a sociologist, sorry if I don't have the basic know how to deeply understand a wiki).

MarkAHershberger (talkcontribs)

Yes, you need access to the server to solve your problems. It looks like someone may have compromised it.

If nothing else, you should find someone who can help you run the wiki from the technical side.

88.130.83.1 (talkcontribs)

You could check the database table "revision" and the table "text" for entries. Your actual text will be stored in the field "old_text" in the text table. However, having a look at a diff view like this one reveals that relationships actually seem to be OK.

Do you really not see the text? I do see it. On the main page and also on other pages, e.g. here...

Note that you are still using MediaWiki 1.15. This version is no longer supported and has known security holes. Using such outdated versions opens a variety of security related problems. You should upgrade your wiki to a current version.

MarkAHershberger (talkcontribs)

When I looked before, I could see the problems described. When I looked today, I didn't see them. If they don't know who has access to the machine, that indicates a problem. Still, I think they've got this sorted out.

Tanonero (talkcontribs)

Yes, they have got it sorted out, thanks a lot.

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