[Pmwiki-users] Wiki-spam

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 04:47:51PM +0200, Thomas -Balu- Walter wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 07:28:25PM -0500, Dave Noonan wrote:
> > Robin Sheat wrote:
> > 	Interesting that they're targeting pmwiki.  I wonder if the intent 
> > 	is for Google to pick up the links and up their page rank.
> 
> Interesting, true.
> I wonder if a check for the referer on the edit page might help.

Well, there'd have to be something else going on here, because it's pretty
clear that one can't use a Google link to directly post a change to a
page.  It might be possible for a Google link to go directly to an edit
form, from which someone can modify/post a change, but by that point the
referrer will have changed to be the edit page.

It would be possible to have PmWiki not serve up an edit page if
the referrer link is Google (or simply doesn't come from the local
server), but I'm not sure that actually increases security meaningfully-
it just adds another step to the process (click "Edit page") that the 
evildoers may already be performing.

I'm guessing that people are simply trying to increase their page rank, 
and know that wiki Sandbox pages may be an easy way to spread links.
Also, the person doesn't appear to be targeting only PmWiki, I found 
references to the same site on at least one other wiki (not running PmWiki
software).

Pm