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.
I wish hackers would invest their time in clearing credit card debt, deleting hospital fees, or something else that actually serves the public good, instead of hacking ordinary people just trying to get by.
Deleting hospital fees/debt is very dangerous… In many HUGE regions in the US there’s only one hospital and if that hospital suddenly can’t pay its bills it could shut down, leaving a whole lot of completely innocent people in a very sad, people-are-dying sort of state.
In fact, something like this already happened:
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/st-maragrets-health-central-illinois-hospital-closing/
Hospitals are special in that they’re often evil organizations (not all though) that are some of the easiest to hack but also provide critical services to the most vulnerable. One should tread lightly. Political solutions are better (hack some politicians that are against healthcare reform instead).
Clearing credit card debt via hacking is nearly impossible but I agree it would be a much more ethical choice for hackers to target. I used to work for the credit card industry. My unique insider perspective, deep industry knowledge, and personal experience is here to let you know they suck. They are just as evil and unethical and unnecessary as everyone thinks they are! Seriously: If Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and all the lesser players suddenly disappeared the world would be a better place.
Before that can happen though people need a backup payment method that doesn’t go through their systems and no: Cash won’t work (there’s not enough in circulation and it’s dangerous to carry large amounts of it). The credit card companies know this threat exists which is why they lobbied Florida (and probably other states) to outlaw alternative, government-run forms of payment (e.g. central bank currency).
As soon as people have a widely accepted payment option that doesn’t go through Visa and MasterCard’s middlemen (e.g. First Data) then hackers can take their gloves off! Until then though… Let’s keep the payment infrastructure working, OK? Thanks!
There’s no limit to the amount of good deeds hackers can do though. So let’s encourage that! For example, there’s plenty of cartels and evil religious organizations (e.g. Taliban, ISIS, Mormon Church, Prosperity Gospel scam artists) that have plenty of money to spare and enormous attack surfaces 👍
Just want to state the obvious and say, this is pretty much only the case in the US.
Ribbit
Inflation does very clearly not serve the public good. That aside, causing havoc in banks and medical institutions would have other unpleasant effects.
How about cleaning the bottom 10%'s debt, with the earings from one week of the top 0.1%?
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.
Fine, let’s do taxes: how about cleaning the bottom 90%'s debt, with the income from 4 months of the top 0.1%.
…and that’s just 30% income tax, it used to be 90% for the rich right after WWII: History of taxation in the United States
It’s not that simple, there’s a response of the “top 0.1%” moving their property elsewhere or distributing it by various legal means so that they’d have to pay less.
In dumb terms, you have to design a system where 4 people collectively owning 4bln$ would pay the same as 1 person owning 4bln$. Not even mentioning that they can have N friends abroad.
Also there are still “rich” people in Scandinavian countries, who may not directly own nearly as much as Bill Gates, but still have enormous power.
Also this will, in fact, affect inflation.
My point is - money represents power, which is convertible into other means, you can tax money or property, but you can’t universally tax power.
Money-wise (as a universal equivalent in a non-coercive system) you can at least somewhat clearly evaluate that power. If you scare powerful people off to convert their power into more obscure media, you won’t have that clarity.
So I don’t see this as a problem one can solve, but I see other problems more accessible, like patent\IP\trademark\certification laws.
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.
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).
Please don’t confuse wealth and money.
What about earnings and income?
Top 0.1% don’t have earnings and income.
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.
The bottom 10% don’t have enough money to “cause” inflation, not even the bottom 90% have that much money. Inflation is driven by the top 5-10%, representing 70% of the wealth; the rest just get taken for the ride.
You’re right the top 1%'s spending won’t change, it’s already 1000x above a person’s basic needs, so what’s the difference between 1000x and 900x (10% inflation).
Exactly, the bottom 10% don’t have enough money, meaning that any money you give them will go towards consumption. The top bracket’s spending as % of income or wealth is tiny and is mostly independent of their income. Their money is spent on investments, not basic goods and services. They practically don’t affect inflation.
I think money should be printed during periods of low inflation. E.g. Japan could have benefited from that. After this bout is over, governments can return to printing, carefully.