Wikipedia operator says OpenAI’s ‘rogue’ bots may be linked to a May outage

<figure> <img alt="Robot hacker typing on a keyboard." data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2026/09/STKS533_AI_AGENTS_HACKING_D.png?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" /> <figcaption> </figcaption> </figure> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">Following many <a href="https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/1000644/irregular-rogue-ai-cyberattacks-hacking-openai-meta-anthropic-google">recent disclosures</a> about AI agents accessing third-party websites and services, the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia, says that it "can confirm that we have discovered some activity" by "rogue" OpenAI agents on Wikimedia platforms.</p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The activity includes edits to Wikimedia wikis, "unsuccessful attempts" to "exploit" the Etherpad note-taking tool that the Wikimedia Foundation hosts, and heavy traffic that the foundation says "may" have contributed to a partial outage that happened in May, <a href="https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2026/10/05/openai-rogue-agent-activities-found-on-wikimedia-projects/">according to a blog post</a>. However, the Wikimedia Foundation says it didn't find evidence that its systems were "used for coordinat …</p> <p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/1004929/wikipedia-openai-rogue-bots-wikimedia-foundation-outage">Read the full story at The Verge.</a></p>