The vulnerability appeared to be from a custom emoji that they were running. SJW does not use any custom emoji so we should not be affected. In either case lemmy.world has now been restored and is back online. I’ll keep an extra eye on this instance until the patch gets released shortly.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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What impact?
As long as you dont go on lemmy.world, it's not going to redirect you to all the stupid websites.
And I doubt whatever they're posting (if they're posting anything) is getting upvoted, so you won't see it anywhere else.
And where are you getting "malware" from?
People are acting like it's some crazy hack, and not the 4chan rejects from exploding heads finally guessing an admins password a week after they got defederated. And after all that time chasing the mailman, they had no idea what to do when they guessed it
But this does highlight an issue with instances. I doubt the handful of admins know each other. Like, maybe an email, but for the most part if shit like this happens during "off hours" it might be a while before the top admin even knows there's an issue
Seems like there’s an active cookie-scraping attack going on. Lots of compromised accounts are going around different instances posting links with drive-by JavaScript. The JS tries to grab your current login token, which would give hackers access to your current login session.
They don’t need your password because they’re just grabbing that cookie that your browser gets when you check the “Keep me logged in” checkbox on login. That’s what allows you to verify your account across multiple sessions, and it allows them to do the exact same thing. They can simply send that authorized token, and “log in” as you. This would (likely) work across instances, because if they grab your cookie then it will give them access to whatever instance your account is logged in on.
So Lemmy.world will likely need to be completely defederated (to stop any compromised accounts from posting on other instances) and your specific instance will likely need to deauthorize all current login tokens (which will forcibly log everyone on your instance out) to stop any local accounts that got hit.
Did you read my post? -I said there might be malware. -I said not to visit lemmy.world -The entire site may be fucking compromised. If you have control the servers, you can change database values to make your post any amount of upvotes you want.
That's exactly what happened. And anyone complaining about vote rigging is probably from exploding-heads too.
There's an admin matrix chat
And how many people answer that on Sunday night?
What I'm getting at is a major website has at least a skeleton staff that can do something, even if that's just pulling the plug.
I don't even reply to most work texts after hours unless it's someone saying they have to use sick leave. I don't expect people hosting Lemmy as a hobby to be on call 24/7.
But I hope afterwards they're transparent about what happened and how they're going to stop it from happening again. If not, it's easy to hop instances
There's other admins working on it now. It's 5am where the owner is.
Instance name checks out
https://sh.itjust.works/post/923025 The comments in this post explain it better than I can, but this seems like a much bigger issue than an admin account being compromised.
It's taking out multiple instances, lemmy.blahaj.zone just went down too
Could I get hacked or compromised or something just by lurking the website? I didn't notice the Israel stuff until a bit late
Password was randomly generated like 5f.4_0@3j&j so no common passwords
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Talk about feeling like the old internet. I was wondering how I would get tricked into seeing something gross by some shock-humor edgelord.
Time to just grab a pint and wait this out. Lol
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Looks like the work of some junior edgelord.
lemmy.blahaj.zone just got hit by it too
Confirmed - fucked on my end too. Looks like the 18.1 update had some sort of major vulnerability.
They seem to be down at the moment. I seriously hope SJW is not affected.
Well, on the bright side of things, I'm able to find out about my main server going down from the dozens of other active instances.
XSS vulnerability reported: https://sh.itjust.works/post/923025
Damn. SJW and .world share the same lemmy source code. Could what is happening to .world happen to SJW? I'd take a dig into the lemmy code, but my brain is literal mush right now, its 11:16 PM here.
Potentially. Apparently it's spreading through comments, not just the sidebar.
when you see this huge thing, RUN FOR YOUR LIVES:
that's the compromised custom emoji
Still getting the redirect at 3:30 AM UTC. Also, first post from my kbin backup.
Yup, I got "this website has been seized by reddit for copyright infringment". Very mature
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About 10:38 pm CST I had just opened it on my browser and it flashed a "Reddit has taken over this site for copyright infringement". And the icon at the top was changed for Israel with the words about raping a child on it. Definitely something wonky going on, but I haven't seen any redirects to anything off site. Definitely not going back from my computer (sounds like the app is safe, but only will check for an update).
Yeah, I get that too, minus the Reddit part. However, during the ten minute span where the attack was resolved (then restarted), a mod/admin account reported that it was caused by a compromised admin account, so not Reddit taking over the site via copyright law. They removed the account, but the issue seems to be back now.
Yeah! Considering being repeatedly attempted (and succeeding)...I'm guessing it may take a little while to deal with.
What's the impact for other instance users ?
None ? lemmy.world was down during the night and is fixed this morning that's it ?
is there a risk that interaction with lemmy.world are leaked including potential "personal data" ?
is there a risk that smarter hackers could use the breach to access the DB behind some lemmy instances without anybody noticing it ?
I'm not seeing anything different with lemmy.world on my end. Can anyone else confirm what OP is seeing?
Edit: Reading that it was resolved in another thread.
Second edit: Nope, not resolved
~~Visited it again, seems restored. I'll update the post.~~ See original post
~~Yup I saw elsewhere that the compromised admin account was removed.~~
~~Edited again, site has been re- compromised.~~ See original post
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Definitely need to bleach my eyes after that 'attack'... saw it unfold and unfortunately saw too much.
There are times when it pays to not be updated of what's going on. This is one of those times. Sorry your eyes had to be subjected to that torture. My first experience with those sites were similar years ago. At work. Lmao fml
Same, my friend, same
And I have nowhere to go but Kbin because Beehaw is unstable and I don't want to open up a fourth account. Accumulating fediverse accounts should be the last thing you do
damn, any idea on how?
An admin had their account compromised. The other admins have since fixed the account and everything should be operational again.
EDIT: Well the site's still down while they clean up the mess that was left behind. But I think the root problem is fixed now. Should be just a matter of time before they flip the switch again.
A .world mod/admin mentioned a compromised admin account. They removed the account, but the issue returned soon after I made the first edit to the post.
Suddenly got kicked off the server and stuff. Was a panicky moment cause I'm on the work computer...is there any indication that malware etc. was involved?
I don't know. I'm running the latest version of Firefox, which does not have any publicly known severe vulnerabilities. I also happen to be running the latest version of macOS, and most malware target Windows. I have not seen any suspicious activity, so I think I'm good. I did harden my OS and browser a bit when I set things up, so that might have made a difference. I would run a scan with Malwarebytes if I were you. Good luck. Hopefully its just a troll.
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