Lemmy @lemmy.ml sunaurus @lemm.ee 2y ago

With the recent hack, there is now irrefutable proof of malicious actors trying to break Lemmy and steal user accounts. Please be careful about entering your password into random Lemmy apps!

I think for a while leading up to the recent session stealing hack, there has been a massive amount of positivity from Lemmy users around all kinds of new Lemmy apps, frontends, and tools that have been popping up lately.

Positivity is great, but please be aware that basically all of these things work by asking for complete access to your account. When you enter your Lemmy password into any third party tool, they are not just getting access to your session (which is what was stolen from some users during the recent hack), they also get the ability to generate more sessions in the future without your knowledge. This means that even if an admin resets all sessions and kicks all users out, anybody with your password can of course still take over your account!

This isn't to say that any current Lemmy app developers are for sure out to get you, but at this point, it's quite clear that there are malicious folks out there. Creating a Lemmy app seems like a completely easy vector to attack users right now, considering how trusting everybody has been. So please be careful about what code you run on your devices, and who you trust with your credentials!

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- Do another one, replace the last panels "alpha Lemmy app" to "password manager" lol
  
  edit: for the record I'm not disagreeing with the first comment in this comment chain.
  
  How many password managers have you been trying out this week?
This is why password managers are so heavily pushed. Imagine if you used the same password for Lemmy that you used for your email? Both are now compromised. A unique password for all accounts is the bare minimum you must do.
- Although it is worth noting that the recent Lemmy hack didn't come from a password compromise, but from session token harvesting, which a password change would not really protect against.
  
  Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but wouldn't logging out of the compromised session be all it would take to end the attack in this case?
- Lol this is not how the hack worked. JWT cookies are encrypted. They don’t contain your password at all. There was no way to reverse engineer from your cookie to your password.
  
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but Lemmys tokens have no expiration, right? So they are effectively username and password combined.
- I literally just got one last week. It's so nice! I guess I was hesitant because centralized passwords always put me off, but it's not hard to setup 2FA on all your important stuff.
- Now again, the key point of this post, but applied to random password managers lol
Sorry, but that's literally every online service. For example if you buy a new virtual server it takes like 5 minutes till a Chinese IP starts to try root passwords.

If someone actually wanted to harm Lemmy they'd just DDOS the biggest instances for a month (which would be easy, it's mostly single servers after all) or attack it with so much spam and large images that storage would break.
- We need moderation tools
  
  Here's hoping Sync and Boost lead the way
  
  Here's hoping Sync and Boost lead the way
  
  Or better yet, let's hope Free Software apps lead the way and ditch the proprietary ones.
  
  I'm getting CS-nerd excited about how this is all going to play out. Federated moderation is hard and so many awful, clunky things have been tried before. Are we actually going to see a web-of-trust or reputation system that reaches widespread adoption? It's gotta be silent and noninteractive as there's no way to expect normal people to put up with the complexity.
- The difference is that when you buy a vps you aren't handing over all your access creds to random developers.
  
  And "harming lemmy" may be an intent that sparks a DDoS but there are other intentions that should make users wary. Harvesting creds of people who reuse passwords across accounts is an easy example that could have more serious implications to the individual user.
  
  Dude, you can't trust any Lemmy instance at all. It doesn't even matter that the code is open source, the instance owner could just compile their own version that sends them every password in plaintext. There is zero guarantee that your password is safe.
  
  Anyone who reuses passwords has been pwned a dozen times already. Just check your own logins here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/
  
  If you reuse passwords online you have a problem, it's simple as that. Even big companies had breaches that leaked user data, no company is safe. For example one of my old passwords got stolen from Adobe. One from Unreal Engine. And my old logins are currently shared in 2,844 separate data breaches. Not using a password manager with a random password per service nowadays is madness.
Using open source apps, especially with more than one contributor, is currently the best option to be safe from this kind of attack.

Edit: I'm not saying that FOSS is 100% secure because it's FOSS. I'm just saying it's the best option we currently have.
- It helps, but it's still not a silver bullet. For example, a Lemmy app could contain no malicious code in its open source repository, but malicious code could still be added to a binary release in an app store.
  
  Voyager (formerly wefwef) is a self-hostable web app, so it doesn't have this problem. Of course this only means you can inspect the code you're running. You still have to able to understand the code to be sure it's not doing anything malicious.
  
  That's why F-Droid is the safest Android app repository. If I'm not mistaken, every app they offer is rebuilt from the public source code by the repo package maintainer.
  
  Yeah, downloading from fdroid or izzyondroid kinda solves that.
  
  Also if it’s a desktop app they could just put the malicious code in the binary download 99% of people will use, or if it’s a web app, they just put it in their hosted version, etc.
- The safest option would be for Lemmy to implement OAuth and apps that aren't in some "official front end for xyz website mode" to authorize via OAuth with the backend instead of via credentials.
  
  Most if not all Mastodon/Pleroma apps already use OAuth by default. I'm surprised that Lemmy hasn't implemented it yet. I wonder if KBin does already?
- No, because open source apps need to have enough eyes on them to spot malicious code. And highly complex ones need proper audits and even that might not be enough to catch every fancy vulnerability.
  
  I doubt a malicious actor would open source their app tho
- How can an idiot like me tell though, everything is pretty new. I just assume every account I make is a throwaway for now.
  
  Well I recommend to stay away from any closed source apps. Also make sure your password is unique to lemmy and use an email address that is not your primary email.
  
  Be careful of clicking links and DMs.
  
  Well I recommend to stay away from any closed source apps. Also make sure your password is unique to lemmy and use an email address that is not your primary email.
  
  Be careful of clicking links and DMs. If using the browser use noscript and block scripts by default.
- OSS does not guarantee security, ever. Please let's not fall into false sense of security.I
  
  But in this case, if an app is open source, there is a higher chance of discovering that it sends your credentials somewhere else than in closed source app
Oauth2 login support for apps would certainly be very welcome.
- I really want this. I haven't tried any of the apps (other than the one I made) yet because I don't want to give anyone my password. Oauth support would be so nice.
My lemmy account is made with a throwaway email and with a randomly generated password just in case it ever gets leaked
- I didn't even attach an email to mine.
- Same, I was on world when it got hacked, rotated the simple login email, and rotated the password post hack (and deactivated the old email) just to be on the safe side.
- Mine is just my porn email, so good luck hackers
Thanks for the heads up. My password is %f22N$CBTNgW, can you let me know if it was leaked?
- pls also check hunter2
  
  What is it? I only see ******. I think Lemmy is hiding personal info now.
  
  I'll keep an eye out 👀
- Pretty funny but if you enter you actual password it will hide it. My pass is ************, which should show up as asterisks for you.
  
  Try it out. Pretty cool security feature honestly.
  
  hunter2
- We need your full name, date of birth and zip code to check
- I'll make sure to let you know if I see it anywhere.
I am using the Liftoff app. It looks pretty safe but I don't really know.
- It's open source and pretty popular (for a Lemmy app at least) so it should be pretty safe
Indeed, this is a real weak spot with Lemmy's security. I honestly think we need to place more emphasis on implementing OAuth2, when I have the time I'll have to take a look at that again to see if I'm able to.
Me reading this post on an alpha app on testflight: chuckles I’m in danger.

Kidding aside, I used a dedicated email (and password) for my account and don’t plan to post any personal info on here.
Are there any known apps that should be avoided? I’m using Mlem and Memmy.
- Not yet, this post is just a warning that it might happen
- Not sure about the other apps, but Memmy keeps your password stored in the app. But generally speaking I don’t think Gavin is a malicious person. He spent 3 weeks with beta tests before he was even comfortable pushing it to Apple App Store and the code is reviewed by Apple before being included to watch for malicious scripting. I am not saying people don’t get malicious scripts passed through Apple, but from what I have seen of Gavin’s work, he doesn’t seem the type that would do that.
- Closed source ones.
- It's not about any specific app.
  
  They are just using many words to say 'remember logging in on these apps means giving them your full username/password.'
  
  We really need a better way to log in from 3rd parties. It'd be nice if we could crowd fund features, I'd def pay up for some sort of app-password system or other
  
  Obviously you should only input account credentials into an app you trust, but shouldn't a properly designed Lemmy app not store the credentials in plain text at all? (And definitely never send them somewhere else) Authorize the user through the API and then it's just an authenticated session, no need to store the username/password at all until you sign out.
  
  I suppose if you have fast user switching it might need to store it. Hmmmm.
1password is probably the most valuable subscription I pay for.
- If anyone's looking for a free and open source option, Bitwarden is also great.
  
  You two have no idea do you? lol
  
  When you pass your password into an app, it can just copy and store it. If at any point you put a password through, even once, its compromised and no password manager will help in the slightest.
  
  I make bobApp, you download bobApp, if you put a password into it, you are done.
  
  edit: answering both of you.
  
  Then i misunderstood. After i typed this I noticed others said what you meant. My bad.
- KeePassXC is free and completely offline
  
  And if you want it to be online, you can just share your .kdbx file between your computers using Syncthing or whatever.
  
  Also Password Store! Syncs over Git and on Android you can use a Yubikey so that the private key isn't even on your phone.
  
  But yes, KeePassXC is way more user friendly. Anything touching PGP/GPG is an automatic red flag for family.
Thanks for this!!

I feel like it raises somewhat the general issue of how much we're willing to live with complete mysterious anonymity from all of the developers and admins in the fediverse. I'm not saying that every admin or developer should have their real identity revealed and linked here. But there's a tension or issue here in how much it's normal and accepted and how much the fediverse in general wants to grow and attract users that are accustomed to trusting large companies that provide a different kind of base level trustworthiness than makes sense "out here".

If not links to real life identities (however trustworthy that can be in the limit), at least some connection to a broader online presence such that it becomes more likely the actor has something to lose in acting in bad faith (the lemmy core devs being a good example).

I don't have a solution ... but it seems to be a growing pain as this whole thing kind of grows from "hacker project" to "mainstream social media".
- The solution has been the same for the last 20 years: Use a password manager, do not reuse passwords. That's it, you're done.
  
  Even if the Lemmy instance admin steals your password (which would be easy!) they can't do anything with it.
What about the app Memmy for iPhone ?
- Preface: I have no opinion. Have not installed, and will not install because I don't need it.
  
  If you have to ask, it's probably worth investigating further.
  
  The first thing I would do is search around for any mention of the app name and variants on the word "password".
  
  Never install anything that you don't trust, and dissociate from your "real" email/identity for those that you aren't sure about. Whoever owns the software potentially owns your credentials.
- Memmy is good!
- I don’t think this one is going to fall in the “malicious” category.
  
  It’s on the iOS App Store, so I’m under the impression that a code review would’ve snuffed that out.
  
  Apple doesn’t review it that thoroughly. They could easily send people’s credentials up to some server and Apple would likely not catch it.
  
  What I mean is don’t just trust it because it’s in the App Store.
  
  I personally use it because it has an active GitHub and is one of the more popular mobile clients. Also I don’t really care if my accounts get hacked in the first place lol so I’m also trying out Mlem beta and Wefwef. But even with that said I wouldn’t just try out any random new client that came along.
- It's not about any specific app.
  
  They are just using many words to say 'remember logging in on these apps means giving them your full username/password.'
  
  This includes password managers
Trying to break Lemmy, yeah, let's prosecuted those bastards, but... WHAT. COULD. BE. MORE. WORTHLESS. than my account?

You are welcome to the scintillating points I have made. Bask in their brilliance.
Feels like this will be a very common occurrence with people rushing to build and use new apps, and host new servers. There are plenty of positives to fediverse vs centralized, but it doesn’t come without negatives.
I've been wondering that myself. I've only entered my pw into Jerboa, which is made by the Lemmy devs (and Liftoff once, but changed the pw since).

Now I only ever use FOSS apps, which all seem to be under some amount of scrutiny, but idk how much is enough.

I've always been particularly wary of Voyager/wefwef. Not that I wouldn't trust the devs, but the whole concept of entering a password into a 3rd page that only passes it onto the right page, damn that's just dumb on principle.

It's particularly weird since this is home for so many techies and privacy/security advocates.
- Its less dumb than entering it into a regular app compiled into an apk, which is more opaque (even if it's also FOSS). Voyager you can host it yourself.
  
  You can compile the app code yourself too.
- All of the apps have you enter your credentials into their page because Lemmy doesn't support OAuth2. I don't think it's fair to criticize Voyager for a problem that is currently inherent to all Lemmy apps.
  
  Yea but it's a local form on the device and not a 3rd party server, which is another layer of insecurity. And I'm not sure how much of the rest of communication needs to get proxied too.
  
  I dunno, that's just way beyond my comfort zone unless I really want to self-host that stuff.
  
  Anyway, okay, nothing seems to be all that well secure at this point.
it's about time to change that password and i think lemmy team should have an option in the settings to revoke access we give to third party apps....not sure if that's possible
Is this a password manager ad?
The greatest part of Bluesky/atProtocol vs ActivityPub is that they let you sign in to one account on any service on the protocol and it requires you to make separate app passwords.

Users getting invite codes every X weeks is nice for the server the require registration too
Apps are bloated(they store a lot of cache on the disk) , just use the website.

113 comments