Technology moves fast. Context matters. Independent by design ↗
vnunet.
Explore topics

Find your next rabbit hole.

Explore the collection, or type to search.

ExplainerPHP2Shell: the two PHP flaws that put most of the web at riskIn October 2026 two critical memory-safety bugs in PHP itself, CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619, leaked before the fix was ready. They let an attacker with no account run code on servers running PHP versions going back to 5.4.ExplainerThe eMudhra key compromise: when a certificate authority’s keys could be guessedIn October 2026 a researcher showed that eight intermediate certificate authority keys belonging to India’s eMudhra were so weak they could be recovered in under a second. Browsers blocked them within hours, and eMudhra quit the global TLS certificate business.ExplainerAI and security: faster bug hunting, faster attacks and new targetsAI models now find serious flaws in core internet software, and attackers use the same tools to exploit them within hours. What October 2026’s run of disclosures shows about the risks, and what defenders can do.ExplainerYahoo closes GeoCities: how the web lost millions of home pagesYahoo bought GeoCities for billions in 1999 and switched it off a decade later. The closure became a turning point for web preservation.ExplainerThe Storm worm: the botnet that started with a weather headlineIn January 2007 an email about deadly storms in Europe spread a Trojan that built one of the largest peer-to-peer botnets of its time.

Press Esc to close

2005 · Google & the web

Wikipedia locks the doors: vandalism and the end of fully open editing

Last reviewed 5 October 2026

After a false biography made headlines in late 2005, Wikipedia restricted new article creation and introduced semi-protection.

The trigger

In late 2005 a hoax biography of the American journalist John Seigenthaler, which had sat on Wikipedia unnoticed for months, became national news. It raised a question critics had asked for years: how can an encyclopaedia anyone can edit be trusted?

The changes

In December 2005 English Wikipedia stopped anonymous users from creating new articles; they could still edit existing ones. At about the same time it introduced “semi-protection”, which blocks anonymous and very new accounts from editing a particular article, usually one under repeated vandalism.

The measures were presented as targeted. Most of Wikipedia stayed open, but the most-vandalised pages could now be locked down quickly.

Long-term effect

The episode moved Wikipedia toward the layered model it uses today: open editing for most pages, protection tools for contested ones, and stronger sourcing rules for biographies of living people.

Sources

More on Google & the web