Edit: obligatory explanation (thanks mods for squaring me away)…
What you see via the UI isn’t “all that exists”. Unlike Reddit, where everything is a black box, there are a lot more eyeballs who can see “under the hood”. Any instance admin, proper or rogue, gets a ton of information that users won’t normally see. The attached example demonstrates that while users will only see upvote/downvote tallies, admins can see who actually performed those actions.
Edit: To clarify, not just YOUR instance admin gets this info. This is ANY instance admin across the Fediverse.
It’s not just upvotes and downvotes. Instance admin also knows your email and can store your password in plaintext if they want to. It’s up to user to decide whether to trust the instance admin
I think you need to clarify how they can see the password. It’s not stored in plaintext, but when the user logs in, the server administrator can see the password in the HTTP post data if they log it in the lemmy sourcecode. All apps are subject to this and it’s why to have to trust the instance owner.
How do you know that an admin has my plain text password? Typically passwords are stored hashed. Do Lemmy instances not do this?
Check this comment for details on Lemmy’s security. https://lemmy.world/comment/765991
TL;DR: Password security is fine. Server doesn’t get your plaintext password.
I didn’t read the source code too deeply, but it appears the server receives the password, and only then it is hashed. How does it work?
- POST -> HTTPS -> SERVER -> hashing
- hashing -> POST -> HTTPS -> SERVER
Is it option 1 or 2 (or other). If option 1 an evil admin can collect the password, or am I misinterpreting something?
I didn’t look at Lemmy’s source but I’m pretty sure it is hashed. The thing is, password is hashed in the database only to protect users in case database gets hacked. But a bad admin of the server can always just change the code and nobody would know. When it comes to websites, open source doesn’t provide any additional security, since everything that happens on the server is a black box. I’m not an expert on this though. Correct me if I’m wrong
What you are saying is somewhat misleading 😒
But did you know over 50k people can see your Facebook password 🤔
But seriously, everything you send to a website/server can, of course, also be seen by it.
This has always been the case everywhere. I am a little surprised that this is suddenly something new…
Looking through the rest of the comments, I think there were already enough explanations.
Making the accusation towards Lemmy that admins can see passwords in clear text is misleading.
It suggests that this is different from other platforms, which it is not. All admins can get your password from/for their respective websites.
Either by logging the traffic before the password gets hashed or by modifying the application so that the password gets transferred in plaintext.
This applies to Lemmy, Facebook, Google and literally any other service where you enter a password.
They could also track the IP address it came from and sell the data if anyone wanted it. I’m sure there are corroborating databases out there for IP address to people lookups
edit: One should also consider that Facebook and Twitter actively sell whatever data they have on you, along with the ability for people to put things in front of your face in all the places you tend to read things. At least on lemmy, you’ve got a volunteer admin that might have scruples.
They store unencrypted passwords in the year of our lord 2023? Be this real?
and password (unencrypted)
This should definitely be mentioned when you’re creating an account. Also, how secure are usually lemmy instances?
password (unencrypted)
Seriously??? No hashing, no salting, no nothing??? WTF?
Jesus Christ that’s a major security risk. Luckily I just created a random string for my password but imagine how many accounts those admins can hack by simply entering the same combination everywhere.
It’s not. No sane person these days keeps password in plain text and to the point there’s no benefit in doing so. Hashed and salted is the correct way to go. Rids developers of any future troubles they might run into in regards to passwords. That said password can be stolen by anyone anywhere if one is not careful. It’s essentially trust based idea. That’s why two factor is a thing.
Also a reason why VPNs are not a security measure, rather a convenience way of working that’s been rebranded these days as security measure. They claim they protect your privacy online, but all it does is changes originating IP address of request. If you browse anything through HTTP protocol they can easily see what you are browsing except now spying on a single person got a lot easier. You just go to one VPN provider and force them to hand over your data.
