So if you do the Docker setup, obeying the instructions and substituting everything that needs to get substituted, but don’t proofread the files in detail and so miss that line 40 of docker-compose.yml doesn’t have the variable {{domain}} like in every other location you need to write your domain, but instead just says LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_EXTERNAL_HOST=lemmy.ml and so you fail to change it away from lemmy.ml… then, everything will work, until you type in your admin password for the first time, at which point your browser will send a request to lemmy.ml which includes your admin username, your email address, and the admin password you’re trying to set. And, also, of course your IP address wherever you are sitting and setting up the server.
I have no reason at all to think the Lemmy devs have set their server up to log this information when it comes in. nginx will throw it away by default, of course, but it would be easy for them to have it save it instead, if they wanted to. And my guess is most people won’t use a different admin password once they figure out why creating their admin user isn’t working and fix it.
@dessalines@lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml I think you should fix the docker-compose.yml file not to do this.
Edit: Just to increase the information-to-rudeness ratio of my post. The docs are at:
https://join-lemmy.org/docs/administration/install_docker.html
And they recommend using wget to download:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/main/assets/docker-compose.yml
Which is pulled from:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-docs/tree/main/assets
Which is what has the wrong line 40 in it.
Edit: They fixed it. Good stuff.
That’s so on-character for .ml
The longer I look at it the more suspicious I am of it, to be honest. I’m just kind of generally a paranoid and accusatory person, so take that into account, but… the files are pretty carefully set up. They have variable substitutions for everything, including a bunch of places where there’s a template substitution to change a string around when setting cache keys so that it’ll still work out-of-the-box right away, even in complex configurations like multiple domains on a single server. It all works out-of-the-box right away, they’ve clearly been attentive to making sure it’s all set up right and keeps working cleanly as things have been evolving forward. Except for that one place.
this is how those Marxist Leninst nation state actors work
If we are entertain this idea, what could they possibly gain from this? Stealing passwords isn’t effective if the victim knows it’s been stolen.
I think it would be very rare that people would put two and two together to realize that their password had been “stolen” by this event. Like I say, I have no real idea even if it is being stolen, just that it would be trivial for .ml to decide that they wanted to start keeping a little cache of everyone’s admin email addresses and passwords.
Like someone else said, if it was anyplace other than lemmy.ml, I wouldn’t give it a second thought, it would just be “whoa you gotta fix this.” I sort of agree with you that there’s not even really any strong indication that there’s anything all that bad they could do with it. It’s only because lemmy.ml moderation actions already have such a pattern of authoritarian dishonesty that I get to any degree paranoid or alarmed about it.
That’s just it. Someone might not realize that all that info was passed to the server when it failed if they weren’t thinking about it. They’d just correct their mistake and move on with their day, especially if they’re new to server administration as I’m sure many (not necessarily most) Lemmy admins would be.
Entertaining the idea… Lol
Do you think OP is making it up?
I assume they just mean the idea that is malicious and not just stupidity.
Neither is good
Yeah but one is typically significantly easier to deal with non-violently.
“What could they possibly gain from having keys to the kingdom?”
rofl! Continue proving how absolutely brainless bootlickers are… It’s a good fit for you.
You daft, mate? Or, just high as giraffe balls?
Im loving that there are ml users coming in and defending it lol
Yeah, don’t they realize they could have just spent that time productively by making a pull request, instead?
Honestly, you found the fault. I agree that you should put the request in.
I mean probably I should. There are a bunch of people accusing me of being dick headed and petty and they’re not completely wrong. Honestly, I just don’t feel like helping the Lemmy devs. Dessalines, at least, is totally unapologetic about being a dickhead to people he has power over. That puts me in a mindset where, mostly, I want to talk to other people about potential harm he’s in a position to do, and not really in a mindset where I want to do even a small amount of extra work on his behalf.
I’m going to tell other people that he’s in a position to take their passwords. If he wants to see that and put himself not in that position anymore? Great, I think he should. If he gets his feelings hurt because I’m not being super friendly about it? Well… okay. I’m not trying to be malicious about it or do anything other than clearly communicate the problem. But it seems like the lemmy.ml “in charge” crew in general has a lot of a mentality that’s kind of like, “Well, I’m in charge, and you’re not, so fuck what you think and fuck your rights. Ban.” (or whatever). The way I operate is that really makes me not want to be extra friendly or courteous to people. I used to have a regular donation to Lemmy development set up, I used to take it seriously the idea of getting involved in contributing to the code, and then I observed how they operate, and … like I say I’m mostly talking to the other people involved who I think should be aware of this. If the devs want to react, fix it, or get involved in the conversation, then sure, sounds good.
The fix is in the comments below, if someone else wants to contribute it and do the very small amount of work of getting it in.
It sounds like a pull request would have been much more helpful, with much less effort. But you want it fixed less than you want it publicized, so you chose this option (even though you could have done both).
In other words, you cared less about the people impacted by this problem, and more about your own opportunity to put the author(s) on blast like this.
And you care about that opportunity so much, that it’s even worth it to show this dark side of yourself publicly.
Am I understanding that right?
Or OP is spreading the word to get it out there. Now it’s got eyes on it thanks to OPs work.
Jesus. Some of you people just want to shit on someone for doing a good thing for no reason. Have you put in a pull request yet or are you just showing your dark side on top of being a dick to OP who did something good?
There’s been a multiyear crusade to oust .ml from the Fediverse with demands that the developers relinquish their instance servers to a third party and/or stop developing Lemmy altogether. That’s not an irrelevant context here given it is usually the same routine players.
I don’t think .ml should be ousted. I think they should stop being dickheads. It’s a little tangential to this particular post (mostly only relevant in that it makes people suspicious of their motives when otherwise they would not be.)
One of the .ml users down below volunteered to put in the PR later tonight if no one else has, so it sounds like both bases are covered now.
They could have done both.
If it’s not fixed by Monday, I will consider starting the approval process from the legal department that requires it from me.
I wish I had the freedom to just open a PR anywhere anytime, but I don’t.
Let’s not get carried away. Shared software systems are about more than the software. If you’re looking only at the software, and that was literally 100% of what is important here and nothing else, then yes, you’re right.
100%. Yes. Correct. I also want it fixed, but that’s completely trivial, with or without the pull request.
I think there you hit the nail on the head! Just the fact that it is in there, whether intentionally or not is something that warrants warning people about. So that in the case someone goes to set up a server, they at least know that recently there was this rather severe risk of unnecessary credential exposure, again no matter if it was intentional or not.
However, I will say that I think I would have also opened the PR, not to help the original dev necessarily, but helping those that might come to use the software later.
…
Right…
Regardless of all that drama, you could have spent five minutes at anytime in the last two hours writing significantly less than you have, and putting the the request in.
You could have been done doing it in-between replies. Just saying.
You could do it to. Be the change you want to see, or be a dick. Your choice I guess.
No i have no idea how to do anything like that. OP does.
The devs have access to the source code. Why would they put something like this two layers deep into the documentation? It’s like those people that think Mozilla is evil, because Mozilla openly talks about what they’re doing. If they wanted to be evil, you would know jackshit about it.
Pick a lane, .ml.
I’ll let the hivemind know that we’re supposed to have only one opinion.
Was just gonna say. Exactly what some authoritarian boot lickers would do.
“Of course the Central Committee would have access to your instance. Why is that a problem? Are you doing something counter-revolutionary?!”
We are using their tools though…
Well, you are, while I am on PieFed:-P If you do not like what you’ve heard here, then consider switching to Piefed.World (Lemmy.World’s recently-announced PieFed replacement for Lemmy)
Oh, that’s interesting. Didn’t know about that.
I don’t think that there’s a way to list instances that a PieFed instance has defederated from, unlike Lemmy; while both have a list of instances at /instances, only Lemmy indicates which ones have been defederated from. It was a helpful tool to help me guess the sort of content an instance had.
Like:
https://lemmy.world/instances (under “Blocked Instances”)
https://piefed.world/instances
EDIT: It does show the last time that the instance sent data, and I guess you could sort of guess that if a large instance that probably has activity hasn’t sent data to the PieFed instance recently — like lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net on piefed.world — then they’re probably defederated. But it doesn’t clearly indicate that this is the case, either.
Try asking in !piefed_meta@piefed.social , !piefed_help@piefed.social or https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/issues
I’ve only been on PieFed a month or so and they’ve already dealt with half a dozen things I’ve mentioned, from bugs to feature requests.
Why are you assuming malice when this is probably just a mistake/oversight?
Because of the way Dessalines and Nutomic consistently act?
Watch. They won’t apologize or admit wrongdoing here. They never do.
They did patch it just now.
I wonder what their answer for this will be in the coming days.
They fixed it.
Everyone here will be ml banned for five months.
And nothing of value would be lost.
Just the normal entropy of things
of course they will. this is still software
Because “when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time .”
All I see here is a mistake. If that’s unforgivable to you then so be it.
If it wasn’t .ml I would not assume malice
Lol you’re on .world, what are you on about
I’m only on .world because Kbin isn’t around anymore.
As someone pointed out, as the admin of .ml is also the main lemmy developer, he could have obscured something like this way better in the code directly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor
This issue here is very different to the xz backdoor.
The xz backdoor was well obfuscated, planned out, and inserted by another actor.
This here is easy to notice, can reasonably be explained as a mistake, and can only benefit the og main devs of lemmy.
A “huh this is odd, also change yalls admin passwords” is appropriate here. Even if we got further indication it was malicious, it would still be far less crazy than the xz backdoor.
Both a strength and weakness of FOSS. There is also the solar winds hack for a proprietary analog in case anyone is curious.
Uh huh, just like how the instance/user block being horribly implemented to where it’s just a barely functional mute is just a (4 year) “oversight”.
Funny how their “oversights” just so happen to have benefits to their efforts to push authoritarianism
https://lemmy.world/post/29072279
also on character for .world
They are even more fanatically anti - ml than their beloved ww2 nazi examples.
You can feel them foaming at the mouth.