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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by ruud@lemmy.world to c/lemmyworld@lemmy.world

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 4) 50 comments
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[-] mayo@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Had an issue at work not long ago involving stolen tokens and back then it looked as if the token was scraped along with a lot of other web traffic and then about 12 days later they gained access.

[-] coconutxyz@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

lemmy explorer still acting kinda funny, not sure who is the person in charge to inform

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[-] sheetmysharts@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Thanks to everyone involved for the quick response ๐Ÿ‘

[-] sma3in@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

that is why I got logged off from my account this morning!! impressed by the rapid intervention!! Good job lemmy team!

[-] mourkeer@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I lost some of my post history. Is there a data issue that's come from this? Why are my comments gone?

[-] pgetsos@kbin.social 1 points 2 years ago

If it is only recent post history, maybe it was purged along with many malicious comments/posts

[-] mourkeer@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

I know but this was over a week of comments lost.

[-] Uncle_Iroh@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

You guys are quick!

[-] Noedel@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Is this why I had to sign in and out of my account on liftoff?

I couldn't comment untill I did that. There may be others!

[-] medvedev@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

thanks to admin team for resolving that quickly

[-] Notsosupermario@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Thanks for fixing and being so open about it

[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

Interesting.

Attackers started changing site settings and posting fake announcements etc

So at least that wasn't 100% malicious, otherwise they could've kept the vuln hidden and just collect data and whatnot.

On the other hand, who cared enough about Lemmy to hack it? Weird.

[-] irkli@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

That shit sucks, I'm so sorry. I'm glad you got it under control. Nothing but admiration from me for doing all this hard work.

New code, new challenges. It's a new world out there and largely is pretty great. Thanks again.

[-] ext23@aussie.zone 1 points 2 years ago

So is it safe to log back in?

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[-] downpunxx@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

******* This happened to me, one of my posts had it's photo deleted (I didn't delete it), then when I replaced it, the next time I checked the entire post had been deleted.

[-] iamsorry@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
[-] gsdsam@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Could admins sign announcements with a PGP key to mitigate false admin posts and the consequences this might have? Or is this no longer necessary?

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this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
831 points (99.4% liked)

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