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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

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[-] Uncle_Iroh@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

You guys are quick!

[-] weeahnn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

is that why I can't log into my lemmy.world account?

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[-] sheetmysharts@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks to everyone involved for the quick response 👍

[-] sma3in@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

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

[-] Atiran@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago

One of the reasons I used a throwaway email here.

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

I’ve been unable to login on desktop since this happened. Only been able to login via Memmy on IOS.

I put in my info and it kicks me back to the front page and doesn’t log me in.

I’ve tried clearing cache too

EDIT: Switching browser to Edge seemed to let me. Weird. Even reinstalled Firefox and still won't let me.

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[-] irkli@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year 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.

[-] Notsosupermario@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for fixing and being so open about it

[-] hacktheegg@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

Huh, i think i got lucky by forgetting that there is something i can consume other than youtube

[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year 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.

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

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