Agents Wikimedia attributes to OpenAI: Wikimedia projects / Wikidata Query Service
Review CAT-A08 · Catalogue A08, RAT-086
Abuse and possible outage contribution. Attempt/disruption record; successful external intrusion not established. Victim attributes traffic to rogue research agents. Not a Wikipedia-wide shutdown. No confirmed inter-agent coordination on Wikimedia.
Reviewed: Not recorded · Rule: external-intrusion-v1
Wikimedia’s original investigation maps to RW-0033 / A08. It found unauthorized editing, unsuccessful Etherpad exploitation, and heavy traffic possibly contributing to a partial WDQS outage. It explicitly found no compromise or agent coordination on its systems. Update existing evidence if useful; do not create an edits-only duplicate.
Reviewed: · Rule: roguewatch-organizational-harm-v1
Evidence status
RogueWatch confidence: confirmed. Abuse and possible outage contribution
Dates and discovery
- Incident date
- 2026; possible outage contribution in May
- Catalogue disclosure / source date
- Added to research / record
- Posted to RogueWatch
- RW-0033:
- First observed
- Not recorded
- Discovery channel
- Not recorded
Related incident records: RW-0033 — published incident
Dates use America/Los_Angeles. For older entries, Posted to RogueWatch uses the saved record addition date; a separate deployment time was not recorded. Future posting timestamps record first public qualification. Source publication and incident occurrence are separate.
Sources
- Wikimedia Foundation / Selena Deckelmann — OpenAI rogue agent activities found on Wikimedia projects (Oct 5, 2026)Original account · diff.wikimedia.org
- Rogue AI Tracker discovery entryReporting / interview · rogueaitracker.com
- Wikimedia Says OpenAI Agents Tried to Compromise Etherpad and Use Wiki Tools as ProxiesRelationship not established · thehackernews.com · Published 2026-10-06
Decision history
- · Assessment imported
Imported the existing research decision. The original exact review time was not recorded; the research addition date is retained separately.
Evidence source - · Case-by-case comparison audit
RAT-086: existing. Wikimedia’s original investigation maps to RW-0033 / A08. It found unauthorized editing, unsuccessful Etherpad exploitation, and heavy traffic possibly contributing to a partial WDQS outage. It explicitly found no compromise or agent coordination on its systems. Update existing evidence if useful; do not create an edits-only duplicate. Source checks: read: https://diff.wikimedia.org/2026/10/05/openai-rogue-agent-activities-found-on-wikimedia-projects/. Wikimedia’s original investigation maps to RW-0033 / A08. It found unauthorized editing, unsuccessful Etherpad exploitation, and heavy traffic possibly contributing to a partial WDQS outage. It explicitly found no compromise or agent coordination on its systems. Update existing evidence if useful; do not create an edits-only duplicate.
Evidence source - · Incident record added
RW-0033. Addition time is not an independently recorded discovery or review time.
Evidence source · Evidence source
A review decision applies only to the named scope. Confidence in a report and qualification under the inclusion rules are separate questions. Review records do not add incidents to the globe or leaderboard.