The Wikipedia pages for Bill and Hillary Clinton were briefly defaced Wednesday afternoon with a porn-laced statement in support of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, prompting one of the world’s most popular websites to implement safeguards intended to protect the articles from further obscene edits.
Wikipedia said it restored both entries within minutes of them being altered to show a pro-Trump message alongside a repeating image of a woman’s exposed genitals.
The message described people who plan on casting ballots for the Democratic presidential candidate next month as “spineless” and “boring,” and implored them to vote instead for Mr. Trump on Nov. 8.
“Nuclear war will be inevitable, as will be Bill Clinton raping more women and children. Save the America you know and love by voting for Donald Trump,” the message said.
The statement concluded by crediting the defacement to an obscenely-named internet trolling group behind more than a decade’s worth of similarly offensive online hijinks: “This message has been brought to you by Meepsheep and the Gay [Expletive] Association of America. Thank you for your time,” it said.
Wikipedia condemned the defacement as an act of vandalism Wednesday, but said that “calling this ’hacking’ isn’t quiet accurate.”
“Wikipedia is open for anyone to edit — this open model makes Wikipedia possible. But as we’ve seen here when someone makes the unfortunate choice to vandalize, rather than positively contribute to society’s knowledge base, that is quickly undone,” it said in a statement said.
Both articles have been subsequently safeguarded by restricting editing privileges to a limited group of users, and Mrs. Clinton’s page is now “protected permanently so that only ’template editors’ or admins (advanced long-term users) are able to edit it,” Wikipedia said in a statement. Wikipedia has 1,280 admins, including 533 who are active, as of Wednesday, according to the website’s own statistics.
It was not immediately clear how the pages were edited in a manner that them to be plastered with a pornographic image, and Meepsheep was not immediately available to comment when reached by The Washington Times.
“The media has created a lot of fertile soil for trolling and I’m sure you’ll start seeing a lot more out of the GNAA and others within the next few months,” they told Jezebel shortly after the defacements appeared.
GNAA and its past and present members have taken credit for several noteworthy escapades dating back more than a decade, consisting extensively of trolling campaigns and other trickery executed for the purpose of provocation. Its former president, Andrew “weev” Auernheimer, was found guilty of felony computer hacking and identity theft in 2013 after publicizing a widely-reported security flaw on AT&T’s website, but his conviction was overturned the following year by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals; more recently, he took credit for spamming unsecured computer printers around the world with an advertisement for a white nationalist website,
Speaking to The Washington Times on Wednesday, Mr. Auernheimer said that exploiting Mediawiki, the open source software that runs Wikipedia, was “a time-honored tradition that spans back to GNAA’s root.”
“Trashing the criminal Clinton enterprise only makes it that much better. Meepsheep is presidential material for this as well as many other great hacks and has my endorsement come the next GNAA election,” he said.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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