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 5) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] 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?

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

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?

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

Excellent, thanks for the quick response ruud and admins.

[-] alaxitoo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

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

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] wildcelt@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Poor beehaw.org is still down

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] DarkSpectrum@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Had to re-login in the Connect app

[-] kluevo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

TY to everyone itt who commented on how to fix the 3rd party app issues.

I was panicking when liftoff went wonky

[-] CascadianBeam@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

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

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] Monochromepsychward@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

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?

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] Magiwarriorx@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Is it possible cookies for other websites were scraped? I was logged in to .world at the time; I have logged out of all accounts, and reset passwords as a precaution, but want to know if I should be on the lookout from this.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] ludw@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

A lot of images seems to be gone from posts in /c/pics is this related to the hack or the cleanup after?

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] itsdavetho@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

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

load more comments (6 replies)
[-] tamal3@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks for the info, Ruud. I just put in for a monthly donation to you all -- I appreciate you.

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

Congratulations everyone on the quick fix/mitigation!

[-] Pillarist@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I had an issue of being logged out of my account and could not log back in, after closing and reopening the site, closing browser, etc until I cleared my cookies, then it let me back in. If that helps anyone.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
3290 points (99.3% liked)

Lemmy.World Announcements

28383 readers
209 users here now

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

Follow us for server news 🐘

Outages 🔥

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 💗

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