Scientician

What are the cybersecurity weaknesses of the Fediverse?

https://waveform.social/post/95554

What are the cybersecurity weaknesses of the Fediverse? - waveform.social

Most of us are Reddit refugees, and probably clicking more random links than we ever did before on websites we’ve never seen before. This whole experience feels like the old internet, but also throws up insane red flags with a modern internet perspective. What are the cybersecurity weaknesses we should all be looking for, and what are the best practices? Here’s my reason for posting this. As I search for new communities across instances to follow, I sometimes end up clicking a link and I’m no longer logged in. In the corner, that could be a Sign In link or it could be phishing. It’s likely due to me not understanding how to properly navigate this system, but there’s nothing stopping someone from setting up a sight like this as far as I know. Thoughts?

Jul 4, 2023 at 4:09amWeb
Show threadKoboldCoterieJul 4, 2023

If you’re navigating to another community on their instance, you won’t be logged in. When you’re seeing that, check the URL. If you’re on lemmy.ml, you’re still on your instance; if not, you’ve navigated to that instance.

There’s multiple ways to structure links, some of which will take you to that community via your instance, some not.

Could it be phishing? Sure. But far more likely, you’re just on another instance where you don’t have an account (or at least an active login).

Show threadScienticianJul 4, 2023
Like I said… Most likely legit, but these issues will arise. This whole Fediverse thing feels like the first big thing to happen for whatever comes next. Which is great, but it would be foolish to think scammers, with modern tools wont try to exploit it. We all have some internet hygiene to figure out.
Show threadGVascoJul 4, 2023
  • Use a mail forwarding service to generate disposable e-mails used to sign up, if you accidentally give it to someone else it doesn’t expose any other accounts and can be easily replaced by a new one.
  • Use a password manager to ensure a strong and unique password.
  • Use a JavaScript blocker so you only allow the required JavaScript to make the website work and prevent automatic downloads.

I’ve been doing these in general recently and it’s good privacy a security practice. Also slowly replacing my main e-mail address in different service accounts with disposable forwarding e-mail addresses.

Show threadsoupspoonJul 4, 2023
Just to add, lemmyverse.net was really useful to me in first subscribing to communities I searched, you can click on the house button at the top and select your particular instance, then any community that pops up in your search you can just click on and subscribe/interact with because you’re doing it through your homebase
Show threadkaseijinJul 4, 2023

Third party apps present a username and password field to log into a Lemmy instance. They can easily just steal your credentials. There are standard auth flows to solve this problem. The fact that Lemmy devs have willfully ignored this issue for years, and that they aren’t warning users not to trust third party apps, lead me to believe they don’t really care about security, which is the biggest red flag. There’s finally an open github issue that seems to be acknowledged, but it’ll be some time before this feature (if ever) ever gets implemented.

-Posted from a third-party app; yea, i gave them my password blindly.

Show threadEchJul 4, 2023

There’s finally an open github issue that seems to be acknowledged, but it’ll be some time before this feature (if ever) ever gets implemented.

Fwiw, the devs seem quite open to (even directly requesting) people coding features they want and having them added into the main code in future versions. So if anyone is able and willing to make a working version of that for Lemmy, it could be added quite soon, really.

Show threadShittyKopper [they/them]Jul 5, 2023

There seems to be a fair bit of admins who just run the Lemmy Ansible installer and expecting to magically have an instance, and have no idea what they’re getting themselves into.

I wonder how many small Lemmy instances exist right now that have SSH password auth (or god forbid root login of any kind) enabled.

Show threadScienticianJul 6, 2023

This is my fear. A huge wave of newbs (myself included) all out here trying to figure it out. I feels like a hacker playground.

Does DEFCON have a fediverse hacking competition this year?