this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023

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

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

553 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

(page 2) 50 comments

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Thanks for the transparency. Was having issues with Lemmy, now seems everything back to normal. Got a question, Just to add an extra layer of security, Do i need to use ToR or VPN with Lemmy ?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

That wouldn't have helped. Don't consider this a secure messaging platform, or use this to communicate banking details or something.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

That was scary and exciting. Response seems competent and transparent. I ❤️ this place.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

Must have been jealous spez

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Well that's just great it really is a shame though how some people would actively want to ruin something free like this just because they can.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago

Hopefully with more attention on the source code scary hacks like this doesn’t happen again.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago

Thank you for your work 🙏

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It seems there is no way in Lemmy to invalidate all your session cookies? Without that, how can you secure an account which has a stolen session cookie?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Testing… I have to keep trying this because memmy is being a dick.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (11 children)

Pardon the ignorance, but how do I know if I was compromised? what do?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

You would see an overdraft and a fee charge on your account where you had 37 dollars.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (6 children)

Would it be a good idea to force a login if the users IP or device suddenly changes?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Um, probably coincidence or a false posi, but malwarebytes is labeling lemmy.~~world~~today as being compromised / malicious when following external links, it's only popped up twice, but here's a slightly redacted log file:

-Log Details- Protection Event Date: 7/10/23 Protection Event Time: 1:24 PM

-Software Information- Version: 4.5.33.272 Components Version: 1.0.2069 Update Package Version: 1.0.72209 License: Premium

-System Information- OS: Windows 11 (Build 22621.1928) CPU: x64 File System: NTFS User: System

-Blocked Website Details- Malicious Website: 1 , C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome Beta\Application\chrome.exe, Blocked, -1, -1, 0.0.0, ,

-Website Data- Category: Compromised Domain: lemmy.today

(end)

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

So thats why MalwareBytes gave me this message yesterday.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Can we get another admin to sign off on this being authentic? In other words, short of a signed GPG signature how do we trust announcements after a breach where admin accounts are compromised?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Good point. I did post about this on Mastodon @[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yah, I noticed my Lemmies auto-corrupted to Lemurs.

I don't care. I'm keeping it.

Lemurs are cute.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Not too promising, hopefully it's fixed quickly.

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