Lemmy.world (and some others) were hacked (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by ruud@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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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 13 points 1 year ago

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.

[-] riskable@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

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 👍