3290
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.

(page 4) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] WhoRoger@lemmy.world 9 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.

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] mackwinston@feddit.uk 9 points 1 year ago

This is why I've decided against running my own Lemmy instance. Too much work to have to keep up constantly with updating, too big of an attractive target for attackers.

[-] erre@feddit.win 7 points 1 year ago

If you run the instance only for yourself then I'd say it makes you an unattractive target. Why do a lot of work to hack an instance with one user?

But yeah, since Lemmy's code is not super mature there'll be some pains in the short term.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] godless@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

With the JWT secret rotation, shouldn't everyone be forced to re-login? I'm posting with my existing session without any changes.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] iMike@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Must have been jealous spez

[-] 001100010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 year ago

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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] JohnSaveourSocks@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Rock on, Rudd.

[-] dorumon@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Autumbloom@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

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 ?

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] TheVampireSaga@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Here's a relevant post that talked about this with @AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world I think is worth looking into for anyone curious what exactly happened.

https://sh.itjust.works/post/923025

please don't visit the legal section of the website or anything confirmed compromised if anything.

[-] xylogx@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

I noticed this morning for a small amount of my posts with pictures, maybe 5-10%, the pictures were deleted or missing. Not sure if this is related to the incident.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] SnowGlobal@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Excellent, thanks for the quick response ruud and admins.

[-] adamlc@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Thanks all working again. Had to clear my browser cache in order to login again and had to resign in to memmy too.

I guess its early days for lemmy for incidents like this, fingers crossed something like this doesn't happen again :)

[-] sab@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

It's a nice reminder that those with the skills but not the bad intentions would be welcome to look through the source code for vulnerabilities and report/patch anything they might find. :)

[-] Reliant1087@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Thank you for taking the time to update this :) Hope everything will be sorted out without people being scared. As a layman, was any user data compromised?

load more comments
view more: โ€น prev next โ€บ
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
3290 points (99.3% liked)

Lemmy.World Announcements

28383 readers
215 users here now

This Community is intended for posts about the Lemmy.world server by the admins.

Follow us for server news ๐Ÿ˜

Outages ๐Ÿ”ฅ

https://status.lemmy.world

For support with issues at Lemmy.world, go to the Lemmy.world Support community.

Support e-mail

Any support requests are best sent to info@lemmy.world e-mail.

Report contact

Donations ๐Ÿ’—

If you would like to make a donation to support the cost of running this platform, please do so at the following donation URLs.

If you can, please use / switch to Ko-Fi, it has the lowest fees for us

Ko-Fi (Donate)

Bunq (Donate)

Open Collective backers and sponsors

Patreon

Join the team

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS