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.

  • @[email protected]English
    0•1 year ago

    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.

    /cc @[email protected]

    • @[email protected]English
      0•1 year ago

      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.

      • @jcgAEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        I doubt this person ever expected anyone to find it or to read that much into it lol

  • FarthomEnglish
    0•1 year ago

    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?

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      0•1 year ago

      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.

      • Skull giverEnglish
        1•1 year ago

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