In theory, all it would take is one Wikimedia steward's account to get hacked, that steward to immediately de-steward all other Wikimedia stewards, then de-bureaucrat the bureaucrats, then de-sysop all the sysops. Then you could just do whatever you want and single-handedly take control of all content on every Wikimedia wiki.



Do you think that this is possible?

No; the developers could pull the plug.

Now if you hacked a developer, and knew enough to throw out all the other developers and make yourself a steward ...

You'd still have to get past that one guy in Florida who actually has physical access to the servers.

And he, in turn would have to get past both his own conscience and the angry mob with pitchforks, whichever one gets to him first.

If a technically-apt person got access to a steward account, a lot of damage could be done, with the use of bots. They may well be stopped quickly, or may not. I would hope all the stewards, checkusers - in fact, everyone, has a secure password and is careful when using public or shared computers.

You wouldn't get all that far, really. There's an option which allows devs to lock the database in an instant and you can be certain there's a nearby hand on the switch somewhere in the world. Besides, you'd be de-stewarded before you even got all your Firefox tabs cllicked

No, you just have to be that guy.