Be careful. New platforms invite bad actors.
Found the error Not allowed to load local resource: file:///etc/passwd while looking at infosec.pub's communities page. There's a community called "ignore me" that adds a few image tags trying to steal your passwd file.
You have to be extremely poorly configured for this to work, but the red flags you see should keep you on your toes for the red flags you don't.
If you find something, report it. Don't experiment on the public.
https://www.bugcrowd.com/resources/guide/what-is-responsible-disclosure/
Is this, by any chance, originated from the sub called ignore me?
In that case is probably my bad because is set as the image of the channel. I was playing with lemmy in the previous version and forgot about it, sorry.
I created that channel to investigate why the lemmy instance was hanging every time there was a symbol in the URL, added that URI as icon for fun and forgot about it.
That alert appears because your browser is trying to load an image with that path, nothing dangerous or remotely exploitable, don't worry.
Edit: I removed it so you shouldn't see the alert anymore.
P.S. no, it's not trying to steal anything, it's your browser trying to load that file as an image but instead of being let's say this url: https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/c0e83ceb-b7e5-41b4-9b76-bfd152dd8d00.png (this sub icon) , it's this one file:///etc/passwd so you browser is doing the request to your own file.
Don't worry, nothing got compromised.
But... why? Why even put that URL there? Even if it was most likely harmless for all users, this still looks like an attempt at data exfiltration.
Because I wanted to try if others URI schemas were supported instead of http / https. file:// was a valid one. Don't worry, the day an attempt of data exfil will happen, you will not see it though your console logs.
Holy shit this is kind of unsettling. Though I would expect ALL major browsers to reject reading any local files like this..... would this kind of thing actually succeed somewhere/somehow?
If you ran your browser as root and configured your browser to load local resources on non-local domains maybe. I think you can do that in chrome://flags but you have to explicitly list the domains allowed to do it.
I'm hoping this is just a bad joke.
Can confirm it's still there for the ignore me community.
I've had around 20 of 'lol exploit' queries in my instance. Luckily none of them succeeded.
I wonder if it is a bad actor or someone is trying to pentest Lemmy. If they were a bad actor wouldn’t they be more successful posting in a more popular community than “ignore me”?
While this is concerning, I wonder what the author(s) of this were thinking would happen. I assume it's supposed to be an attempt at stealing the server's passwords, since I at least know of no browser that freely allows access to local files.
FWIW, /etc/passwd itself contains no passwords (the name exists for historical reasons) but it definitely is a globally accessible file that can give you clues about the target system. Given this, it's more likely the user is attempting to find out if arbitrary disk reads are possible by using a well known path on many servers.
Nice share, thanks for the information. Definitely need to be careful both as a server operator with Lemmy, and a user of it.
First thing I did when I got an account was enabled 2FA. It was a bit of a hassle cause its a link that you need to open in a device that supports it (ie: phone) but hey at least an option.