Beehaw Support @beehaw.org darrsil @beehaw.org 2y ago

Warning: lemmy.world just got hacked

I would be cautious about viewing any Lemmy.world communities right now, and the Beehaw admins should make sure their credentials are locked down in case they get targeted next.

53 comments

You are already defederated from them...
- Just because Beehaw is defederated from this instance, that does not mean that visiting a recently compromised server will not cause your credentials to be compromised.
  
  Read the post again. It was specifically mentioning viewing lemmy.world communities, which is not possible through beehaw.org due to defederation. All you would see is the content before defederation.
  
  It's also possible that Beehaw's instance is vulnerable to the same XSS attack.
  
  No user data like credentials gets transfered. Everything between instances is done with bot like helpers that do the data transfers.
  
  Why would a "foreign" instance need to know my credentials from my local instance just to allow me to browse that foreign instance?
- Ah, didn't realize they were already defederated. Still, admins should be on the lookout for an attack on Beehaw.
- But I'm not. I'm federated with both Beehaw and lemmy.world.
  
  The post was posted in !support@beehaw.org by beehaw.org user.
If done via hacked admin credentials, this is a great advertisement for enabling 2FA anywhere it's supported. AIUI Lemmy is also getting support for this for user accounts soon (https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2363)
- Oh wait, so 2FA doesn't fully work yet? I guess that explains why I've been having such a hard time trying to get it set up.
  
  It works, but it's half-assed. The way Lemmy sets it up only works on a portion of authenticators, and ones like Authy isn't one of them. Then it also doesn't have a confirmation before enabling it, so you may think it's working but then get locked out of your account when you can't log in next time around.
  
  The best way to test it is to enable 2FA and set up the code, but keep your Lemmy settings open. Then open an incognito window and see if you can log in using the 2FA code. If you can't, go back to the settings window and disable 2FA.
Welcome back to Beehaw!
this is fucking hilarious, this is going to be a blow to confidence in the security of the fediverse
i wonder if the websites that covered the reddit protest will cover this
- Surely it's not really any different to any other website's admin having their account hacked/their password socially engineered? It's not an inherent flaw in the fediverse as a whole, just a human issue.
  
  EDIT: see @Zephyrix's comment below. It was a security flaw.
  
  This was not a social engineering. It was a JavaScript injection that stole browser cookies, bypassing password changes and 2FA.
  
  However, it seems lemmy.world was running a custom version of the UI. So it's possible that it only affected their instance. Hard to say at this point.
- Arguably it is a strength. Unless a user has used the same username and password for different instances, their credentials on one instance are shielded from exploit over the whole network. The potential risk can only really be determined by how security was breeched. If it was social engineering, then there isn't any other direct concern. If it was a vulnerability in software, then the same attack could be played out on other instances, but that's not any different than other systems like a Linux kennel exploit.
- Run alpha software, experience alpha security flaws. It's not going to really say anything about the Fediverse at large, but it's more a tale of caution for the Threadiverse specifically, which is FAR younger, but has grown explosively, especially given that Lemmy is early beta status and KBin is alpha status
- it would be a lesson for all instances, not just world. i hope they provide more details so others can take note
They changed root folder / frontpage, if you access lemmy.world from web browser you'll be redirected somewhere

However, you still can access lemmy.world through applications
- This is what I was wondering. It sounds like their frontpage is defaced but the underlying server is untouched. So if you login via an app you should still reach the server as normal?
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/ hacked too, so two Lemmy instances.
There IS one major problem. Many accounts only have optional email attached for .world, mine included. I think that means compromised credentials are a massive problem.
- I'm going to shill for https://simplelogin.io here. Any other aliasing service will do, too. SL is just the one that I use. Email aliases are game changing.
  
  Isn't that a subscription service thing though?
- If you don't use a unique password which that's on you
  
  I do use a unique password. I just use it for every account.
I have an account on lw. Might be time to abandon it or delete it.
- Logging out and then logging in should be enough for now.
- Just hoping this isn't some 0-day attack vector that will eventually be used against Beehaw.
  
  One of the admin account was compromised.
- How do you delete your account if it's hacked? I went on moments before I saw this and got a 404 error (I think) and then came here and saw this. I am not comfortable going back.
Thanks for the heads-up. Password changed.
- Not sure exactly how they were hacked, but if the server is still compromised then changing your password now doesn't do any good.
Working fine right now.
Looks fine to me...

53 comments