this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
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PSA: LEMMY.WORLD WAS COMPROMISED (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by SimplePhysics@sh.itjust.works to c/main@sh.itjust.works
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If you are a lemmy.world user, log out and log back in to clear cookies!

Last night, lemmy.world was compromised via an XSS vulnerability with custom emoji. Using this vulnerability, attackers took control of an admin account. The site redirected to mp4 files when logged in, and porn sites when not logged in. The issue was resolved by lemmy.world admins soon after it started, but the attacker regained control of the compromised admin account around ten minutes after resolution, redirecting users to the same mp4 files and sites. Soon after that, the site became inaccessable. The issue is currently resolved, and lemmy dev team has been notified of this vulnerability. sh.itjust.works will not be affected, as we do not have any custom emojis. If you own an instance with custom emojis, it is advised to remove these emojis and clear your cookies.

The following is the original post:

PSA: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ACCESS LEMMY.WORLD, THERE MIGHT BE MALWARE

Lemmy.world member here. I created this account after .world started redirecting me to porn sites and odd mp4 files. We might want to defederate to limit the potential impact. Also, SJW might be affected by the same vulnerabilities as .world, so maybe the admins here should look at that.

Edit: ~~Situation seems to have stabilized. Some site icons aren't loading, but otherwise everything seems stable.~~ Read Edit2

Edit2: ~~HOLY SHIT ITS BACK~~ Read Edit3

Edit3: ~~lemmy.world is now down as of 10:56 PM CST (USA)~~ Read Edit4

Edit4: lemmy.world is now up, but serving an error as of 11:03 CST (USA) See a screenshot of this error. I also got logged out, hopefully it doesn't mean they just wiped the databases lol.

Edit5: Edit4 still applies, but I can now access lemmy.world via Memmy on my phone. Wefwef (Voyager now) does not work, however. Timestamp: 11:34 PM CST (USA)

Edit6: lemmy.world restored. Compromised admin account said something in a weird post. I'm going to bed now, my brain is play-dough rn. Will update you guys tomorrow morning.

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[–] Early_To_Risa@sh.itjust.works 67 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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

[–] humanreader@infosec.pub 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Vietnam flashbacks of shock sites.

[–] Derproid@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Fuck that zombie.

[–] Dirk_Darkly@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago

This is the unregulated chaos I've been missing from my internet. Feels like home.

[–] Givesomefucks@reddthat.com 59 points 1 year ago (8 children)

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

[–] SimplePhysics@sh.itjust.works 22 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 18 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] steakmeoutt@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's exactly what happened. And anyone complaining about vote rigging is probably from exploding-heads too.

[–] carbon_based@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

Possible but on what evidence would one make such a claim?

[–] sanpedropeddler@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] wetnoodle@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

It's taking out multiple instances, lemmy.blahaj.zone just went down too

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There's an admin matrix chat

[–] Givesomefucks@reddthat.com 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There's other admins working on it now. It's 5am where the owner is.

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[–] bestdude@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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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[–] TheDude@sh.itjust.works 56 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] wetnoodle@sh.itjust.works 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

lemmy.blahaj.zone just got hit by it too

[–] Arotrios@kbin.social 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Confirmed - fucked on my end too. Looks like the 18.1 update had some sort of major vulnerability.

[–] SimplePhysics@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

They seem to be down at the moment. I seriously hope SJW is not affected.

[–] meldroc@sh.itjust.works 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Looks like the work of some junior edgelord.

[–] BitingChaos@kbin.social 25 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] babetoduarte@lemm.ee 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

XSS vulnerability reported: https://sh.itjust.works/post/923025

[–] SimplePhysics@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago

Potentially. Apparently it's spreading through comments, not just the sidebar.

[–] Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 ?

[–] SimplePhysics@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

Lemmy.world was defaced last night. As far as I know, there is no DB breach. An XSS vulnerability was abused to steal the cookies of an admin account.

[–] randon31415@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Still getting the redirect at 3:30 AM UTC. Also, first post from my kbin backup.

[–] 567PrimeMover@kbin.social 18 points 1 year ago

Yup, I got "this website has been seized by reddit for copyright infringment". Very mature

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[–] AndreTelevise@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago

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

[–] ChronicEd@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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).

[–] SimplePhysics@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] Sami@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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

[–] SimplePhysics@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

~~Visited it again, seems restored. I'll update the post.~~ See original post

[–] Sami@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

~~Yup I saw elsewhere that the compromised admin account was removed.~~

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[–] user_already_exists@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Definitely need to bleach my eyes after that 'attack'... saw it unfold and unfortunately saw too much.

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[–] malloc@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

Single 🔧 vs Federated ActivityPub instance, who wins

😂😂

Side note: glad the lemmy devs and mods able to figure it out and all while doing this part time. Great community yall. Hope to contribute my time as well.

[–] Secret300@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

damn, any idea on how?

[–] Chozo@kbin.social 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] SimplePhysics@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

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.

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