Topic on Project:Support desk

Utini (talkcontribs)

Hello everyone,

I wonder how it would be possible to hide my sysop account form all activites to the public?

So that e.g. it is not possible to bruteforce the exact username?


I tried:

$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['bot']    = true;

$wgGroupPermissions['sysop']['hideuser'] = true;

$wgGroupPermissions['bureaucrat']['hideuser'] = true;

$wgGroupPermissions['bureaucrat']['bot'] = true;


How ever, when going to "recent changes" it will still show the username next to the changes that have been done with a sysop account.

MarkAHershberger (talkcontribs)

You would have to find an appropriate Hook and write some PHP code to modify the query or display of the recent changes page. This isn't really something that fits within the philosophy of MediaWiki, so that sort of functionality is not included out of the box.

Utini (talkcontribs)

Hmm I see. I thought of it like a security enhancement. If the public knows what account names are sysops, then they can aim to compromise those specific accounts.

E.g. usually the 1st registered account (user-id=1)will be an administrator. So I prefer to register a few fake accounts and name e.g. the "user-id=17" as admin.

Or even better.. hide the administrator completely :)

Bawolff (talkcontribs)

MediaWiki is not designed with this usecase in mind. At best, if your wiki is entirely private, then nobody can see any of the usernames.

One really hacky method, is enable the 'hideuser' right (This gives you an extra option in Special:Block to hide an account). Keep the account blocked with hideuser enabled whenever you aren't using it, and unblock the user when you need to do something (Depending on config, users can unblock themselves)

Another option is have no admin account. Anytime you need an admin, log into server and run createAndPromote.php from command line [Despite the name, that script can give admin rights to an already existing account instead of creating a new one if the --force option is given]

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