this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023

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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

705 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 5) 50 comments

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[–] alaxitoo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I found this in my private messages, when an attack was happening I messaged the guy “are you ok” and he replied back to me with an image of my own message… I wonder if this was similar to what was done here? Was 8 days ago

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[–] jarfil@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago (9 children)

How does this impact those using mobile apps like Jerboa or Liftoff, instead of the website directly?

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[–] Monochromepsychward@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What are the risks for people who use Jerboa for Lemmy? I logged put and back in and there doesn't seem to be any issues, so are the app users excluded from this?

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[–] CascadianBeam@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] xandowsk@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Congratulations everyone on the quick fix/mitigation!

[–] IverCoder@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I heard that some instances were defaced. Any examples of this? I wasn't online this noon so I never got to see any action.

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[–] Aloomineum@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Passwords were leaked?

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

I wasn't using webpage, I was only using mobile app (Connect). Could my coockie be also stolen that way or was that only possible on webpage?

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[–] 001100010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If I'm not from lemmy.world and visited a lemmy.world community via my home instance, does the hacker gain access to my account?

If I, while logged in to my home instance, accessed lemmy.world in another tab, does the hacker gain access to my account?

Does this hack infect devices used to access lemmy.world?

Sorry for noob questions, I'm just worried.

[–] ollie@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

afaik, exploit does not pass through federation. but you should change your password just in case.

it doesn't and probably cannot infect your device

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

Thanks for the quick reaction and TRANSPARENCY!!

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