this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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Lemmy.World Announcements

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While I was asleep, apparently the site was hacked. Luckily, (big) part of the lemmy.world team is in US, and some early birds in EU also helped mitigate this.

As I am told, this was the issue:

  • There is an vulnerability which was exploited
  • Several people had their JWT cookies leaked, including at least one admin
  • Attackers started changing site settings and posting fake announcements etc

Our mitigations:

  • We removed the vulnerability
  • Deleted all comments and private messages that contained the exploit
  • Rotated JWT secret which invalidated all existing cookies

The vulnerability will be fixed by the Lemmy devs.

Details of the vulnerability are here

Many thanks for all that helped, and sorry for any inconvenience caused!

Update While we believe the admins accounts were what they were after, it could be that other users accounts were compromised. Your cookie could have been 'stolen' and the hacker could have had access to your account, creating posts and comments under your name, and accessing/changing your settings (which shows your e-mail).

For this, you would have had to be using lemmy.world at that time, and load a page that had the vulnerability in it.

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[–] ThisIsMyLemmyLogin@lemmy.world 268 points 1 year ago (31 children)

I wish hackers would invest their time in clearing credit card debt, deleting hospital fees, or something else that actually serves the public good, instead of hacking ordinary people just trying to get by.

[–] 00Xero00@lemmy.world 35 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I bet that little cunt Steve Huffman paid them to sabotage us

[–] TheVampireSaga@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As I pointed out in the thread it was probably a few Lemmy users themselves that did it.

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And some people do it for teh lulz.

Not everything has to be some conspiracy theory.

[–] dingus@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah it seems like the attack wasn't "malicious" per se in that the attacker didn't seem to want to completely take down the site. They just seemed to want to mess with everyone by redirecting to lemon party and other mildly shocking things like racist remarks. Reads more like a bored person to me than anything.

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Fpsfrank85@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Gotta bring back the classics

[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

Pool's closed, sorry!

[–] 0Xero0@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

it doesn't matter who, it's the "why". They get nothing from this, the only one who benefits from Lemmy going down is spez

[–] SrElsewhere@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've sat at keyboards beside people studiously working their own. My presumption was that we were working on the same project. Then they have their AHA moment, and show me how they've hacked into our host machine.

They didn't do it for money or to cause disruption. They did it to see if they could, and succeeding was reward enough. Then, happy as could be, they set off in pursuit of their next accomplishment.

Ya never know what's going through others' minds or what motivates them.

[–] Fpsfrank85@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

If anything an annoyed Reddit β€œhacker” doing it to see if they could and for the lulz

[–] 4am@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I thought we weren’t going to be Reddit-brained over here

[–] dandroid@dandroid.app 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit, Threads, Twitter, Elon, and, Zuck seem to be all people know how to talk about in the more popular communities.

And don't forget circle jerking about how the average IQ of a Lemmy user is higher than average.

[–] TheStarkGuy@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Nah. There's far too much risk for Reddit to be involved. If even one hacker spilled the beans it'd cause a massive panic for Reddit investors.

[–] eating3645@lemmy.world 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"It would be extremely stupid and would inevitably backfire if reddit was responsible. Seriously, if spez has one ounce of foresight he would not be involved."

Well you have convinced me reddit is behind it.

[–] TheStarkGuy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

There's a huge difference between alienating people in an effort to make the website profitable, and outright paying hackers to go after Lemmy, which would be a criminal action. Let's not get all big brain on here and pretend Lemmy.world is a threat to Reddit and is pulling away tons of users, to the point that Spez needs it out of commission. I didn't jump here from Reddit to promote conspiracies

[–] linearchaos@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I mean if they spilled the beans, we'd have to upvote them.

[–] SrElsewhere@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

It's well established that Rdeadit* doesn't make foolish moves. /s

I'm not saying they're behind this. I think they are not. But I'm not ruling them out because of their acumen.

During the event a message flashed on my screen, "This website has been seized by Rdeadit for copyright violation". That suggested two things to me. Rdeadit didn't write that. Whoever did write it doesn't understand how a domain would legally be seized.

[–] riskable@programming.dev 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Deleting hospital fees/debt is very dangerous... In many HUGE regions in the US there's only one hospital and if that hospital suddenly can't pay its bills it could shut down, leaving a whole lot of completely innocent people in a very sad, people-are-dying sort of state.

In fact, something like this already happened:

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/st-maragrets-health-central-illinois-hospital-closing/

Hospitals are special in that they're often evil organizations (not all though) that are some of the easiest to hack but also provide critical services to the most vulnerable. One should tread lightly. Political solutions are better (hack some politicians that are against healthcare reform instead).

Clearing credit card debt via hacking is nearly impossible but I agree it would be a much more ethical choice for hackers to target. I used to work for the credit card industry. My unique insider perspective, deep industry knowledge, and personal experience is here to let you know they suck. They are just as evil and unethical and unnecessary as everyone thinks they are! Seriously: If Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and all the lesser players suddenly disappeared the world would be a better place.

Before that can happen though people need a backup payment method that doesn't go through their systems and no: Cash won't work (there's not enough in circulation and it's dangerous to carry large amounts of it). The credit card companies know this threat exists which is why they lobbied Florida (and probably other states) to outlaw alternative, government-run forms of payment (e.g. central bank currency).

As soon as people have a widely accepted payment option that doesn't go through Visa and MasterCard's middlemen (e.g. First Data) then hackers can take their gloves off! Until then though... Let's keep the payment infrastructure working, OK? Thanks!

There's no limit to the amount of good deeds hackers can do though. So let's encourage that! For example, there's plenty of cartels and evil religious organizations (e.g. Taliban, ISIS, Mormon Church, Prosperity Gospel scam artists) that have plenty of money to spare and enormous attack surfaces πŸ‘

[–] ReadyUser31@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

Hospitals are special in that they’re often evil organizations

Just want to state the obvious and say, this is pretty much only the case in the US.

[–] bev@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I think the alternative payment systems in the developing countries are actually good. UPI in India is very utilitarian. China also has the wechat thing. I guess the issue with these are that they are not universal and limited to a single country.

[–] ZILtoid1991@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago

Considering some of the targeted instances and the stuff they left behind, it was likely some nazi.

[–] 4am@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

β€œMarty we started this journey together!”

β€œIt was a prank, Cos’!”

[–] TwoGems@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
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