While I was asleep, apparently the site was hacked. Luckily, (big) part of the lemmy.world team is in US, and some early birds in EU also helped mitigate this.

As I am told, this was the issue:

  • There is an vulnerability which was exploited
  • Several people had their JWT cookies leaked, including at least one admin
  • Attackers started changing site settings and posting fake announcements etc

Our mitigations:

  • We removed the vulnerability
  • Deleted all comments and private messages that contained the exploit
  • Rotated JWT secret which invalidated all existing cookies

The vulnerability will be fixed by the Lemmy devs.

Details of the vulnerability are here

Many thanks for all that helped, and sorry for any inconvenience caused!

Update While we believe the admins accounts were what they were after, it could be that other users accounts were compromised. Your cookie could have been ‘stolen’ and the hacker could have had access to your account, creating posts and comments under your name, and accessing/changing your settings (which shows your e-mail).

For this, you would have had to be using lemmy.world at that time, and load a page that had the vulnerability in it.

  • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    28
    ·
    1 year ago

    clearing credit card debt, deleting hospital fees, or something else that actually serves the public good,

    Inflation does very clearly not serve the public good. That aside, causing havoc in banks and medical institutions would have other unpleasant effects.

    • jarfil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      35
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      How about cleaning the bottom 10%'s debt, with the earings from one week of the top 0.1%?

      • DreadTowel@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        I already know I’m gonna be downvoted for this, but the top 1%/0.1% spending isn’t gonna change, whereas the bottom 10% will cause inflation… That’s why there’s no magic bullet.

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        arrow-down
        17
        ·
        1 year ago

        Ah, you mean unauthorized “redistribution”, not unauthorized “vanishing debt”.

        Technically should do less harm in terms of inflation, but money lying around is different from money being used, so there’ll still be an increase in inflation.

        The part about causing havoc - kinda same, there may not be direct inconsistencies as in the initial variant, but there’ll still be some confusion due to the “top 0.1%” possibly being petty and trying to get their money back.

        I frankly prefer changing the rules so that there’d be fewer artificial barriers for competition and economic efficiency to this. Say, patent law and trademark laws and IP laws have basically outgrown their usefulness and are now just a plague. Same with various licenses and practices for medical/pharmaceutical stuff (I know that things should be tested and an average person can’t tell a hoax from a normal thing, just entities doing certification shouldn’t be able to block stuff which would then be used to create oligopolies). Same with telecom. And so on.

        Except for air traffic, water traffic, road traffic and radio, of course. Not regulating those would mean, eh, real havoc.

        • sab@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          7
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          You’re ruining the circlejerk with your realism! 😠

          Edit: I think Mr. Robot gave a good glimpse what would happen if all debts were wiped. It sounds fun on paper, but in the end, the people with the least money would suffer the most.

          • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I personally just lose any interest in conversation when I realize that my counterpart doesn’t want a working system or a better world or really some justice, they simply want to rob someone who has more than they do. No deeper purpose or something, just plain envy.

            It’s like certain moments in sex. So bloody frustrating.

            And, of course, the only leftists I’ve encountered who wouldn’t be what I describe were book characters. Yeah, nice characters, fascinating, really making me wish something like this was possible, but even with the depth limitations for describing an entire person on paper they were still deeper that RL leftists, FFS!!!

            I have at least met living sincere good-willing ancaps and living sincere good-willing fascists (sic) even. The only people I know in person I could possibly call a real sincere good-willing leftist would be my sister, and maybe one of my cousins, and one DM (though from a few conversations I suspect he just has, eh, a leftist background, but is more literate in economics than such people usually are).

          • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Well, I honestly in a way write such comments in a tone more likely to irritate people. Maybe not consciously. I just happen to have grown in a family and in groups where disagreeing and arguing was not considered disrespectful, and I am ironically not very tolerant to the other way of looking at this.

            (Should think about this more often when I want to complain about life - some people were not that lucky.)

            • DreadTowel@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Seems that a chunk of this platform’s userbase are people generally angry at the establishment who upvote everything that wants to bring it down and downvote everything that rejects the idea. Happy that there’s many reasonable people here too :)

              • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                I’m generally angry at the establishment too, it’s just that I see that establishment being pretty friendly to leftist ideas on economics in everything but direct admission of it.

                • DreadTowel@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Well, you can disagree without being angry. I in general think that anger is a liability, not an asset. It hinders debate and argumentation.

      • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Having a dedicated sub for bad understanding of economics seems stupid, it’s already spread over all subs, it’s normal.

        Of course, the extremes of bad economics would be usually found someplace with “soc” in the name.

        • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I’m saying your statement is bad economics. Debts get discharged all the time and they have no impact on inflation. It’s called the Bankruptcy System and it’s been a part of American economic reality since the mid-1800s.

          • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Debts get discharged all the time

            Yes, so?

            and they have no impact on inflation

            Measured by whom? Logically they should.

            It’s called the Bankruptcy System and it’s been a part of American economic reality since the mid-1800s.

            So in your idea of good economics it doesn’t matter for inflation if debt of NxM total gets discharged per month or of NxK total per month where K is much bigger than M?

            I just don’t get that pretentious acting.

            • utopianfiat@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              Logically they should.

              No, they shouldn’t. The money supply is unaffected by discharges.

              So in your idea of good economics it doesn’t matter for inflation if debt of NxM total gets discharged per month or of NxK total per month where K is much bigger than M?

              Discharge does introduce short-term shocks but it’s not the doomsday scenario you’re painting it to be. We did it in the 1800s and it was mostly fine compared to the regular bank panics before the greenback was adopted.

              • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                The money supply is unaffected by discharges.

                Ah, OK. Maybe “inflation” is the wrong word, but there’s a response. Insurance becomes more expensive, loans become more expensive, basically everybody for whom such an event is a risk reacts to its probability growing.

                but it’s not the doomsday scenario you’re painting it to be

                Well, I’m not saying it’s literally a doomsday scenario, just that it likely wouldn’t benefit the person dreaming about it more than it would harm them.

                • DreadTowel@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  Nono, inflation is the right word. Inflation isn’t caused by the money supply, but by supply vs demand. If demand suddenly increases, there will be inflation. If a lot of money is printed and is thrown in a hole, money supply will increase, but there’ll be no inflation.

                  • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    Well, yes, I’m just always floating in economic terms, it really doesn’t help that people around often have differing ideas on what these mean.

                    Only decreases (if we are speaking about demand for money, not demand for commodity bought with it), not increases, but I think it’s an error, not a mistake. =\