Slashdot Mirror
Details of the LiveJournal Account Hacks
An anonymous reader writes "Brian Krebs of the Washington Post has written about the recent spate of
hijackings at Six Apart's popular LiveJournal service. Hundreds of journals have now been taken over by a
notorious group called 'Bantown' using a series of complicated cross-site-scripting vulnerabilities. Krebs details the recent security changes made by LiveJournal in response to the takeovers." From the article: "It is unclear whether LiveJournal has managed to close the security holes that the hackers claim to have used. The company says it has, but the hackers insist there are still at least 16 other similar JavaScript flaws on the LiveJournal site that could be used conduct the same attack. [Bantown] group members said they plan to turn their attention to looking for similar flaws at another large social-networking site. "
Maybe they should write about how they did it in their blog, I mean someone elses blog.....
Nooo! Poor Emos! I can just see them shivering in a cold, dank corner, cutting themselves because their journal was hi-jacked. What is becoming of this world?!
This is a wake up call to people who use these services... sites like MySpace, LiveJournal, all have fancy features that do things that "users want", but at the expense of security because users don't think of/realize/care about security unless it actually results in a successful hack against them. Those who have hacked LJs might want to consider running their blog using plain text instead of all that wacky Javascript (not exactly necessary for something as basic as text on a web page). Ya get what you pay for... I'd be pretty choked if I was a LJ user who paid for a membership and had my pages all highjacked beyond repair, though...
How on Earth are all those white kids in the suburbs going to express their teen angst now?
I've seen your pictures and can definitively say that the hackers were doing the world a service.
This guy's the limit!
They also don't tell us which browser is affected on the newspost. How can we be safe if we are not informed? Can Six Apart actually deal with this in a professional way? I've been noticing LiveJournal is really slow and it hangs a lot lately. It seems that they know nothing about security and are just randomly mashing buttons in a attempt to hit the nail in the head.
Is Six Apart that incompetent that they can't prevent such attacks after they have been going for days, or is this bantown group really that good?
Bored? Browse Slashdot with a +6 modifier for Troll comme
As we move more towards applications that depend on the JavaScript enabled client (AJAX and all his relatives) we will see more of this hacking.
On the bright side, it will eventually get people to code securely in a non-trusted enviroment becuase the source code is not only available, but changeable.
Sadly, there will be a bunch of rough lessons between that wonderful future and what we have right now, espeically with all the focus on WEB 2.0 and Ajax.
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
...they hacked into my LJ and corrected all the meter in my "I am sad/I want to die" goth poetry!
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
It would've been nice if LJ's news post on starting to fix this vulnerability had said which "popular browser" was affected.
Also, I somehow find myself suspecting that the anonymous person calling this 'Bantown' group 'notorious' is probably a member of it.
Details are scarce; all I could find in the LJ_Dev community relating to this wasone post about the effects of the first phase of the fix. Especially check Brad's comments.
egypt urnash minimal art.
Current mood: 0wned
I am officially gone from
he used his worm to add people to his buddy list! that's really really funny! look how popular i am! i've got millions of friends! no one will laugh at me now!... er... i uh... yes... i wrote a worm to make friends for me....
When your site is down & Livejournal's making you angry
You can always blame - Bantown!
When you've got blogs, all the noise and the worry
Seems to stop, I know - Bantown!
Just listen to the music of the vulnerable website
Linger on the domain where the CSS is not right
You only lose!
The lags are much longer there
You can see all your troubles, see all your fear
So go Bantown! things'll be worse when you're
Bantown! - no security measures, for sure
Bantown! - everyone's waiting on you!
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I've written an FAQ on this type of attack which can be found below.
The Cross Site Scripting FAQ
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
Cue the 500 posts about "haha, sucks for those Livejournal-using emo fucks" which help (a) put me off of Slashdot for a few days, and (b) obscure the actual information about how I should secure my account or what vulnerabilities these break-ins made use of.
I'm taking a deep breath and trying not to get in an argument with the "Livejournal is stupid" crap that will get modded funny. Just be aware that it gets on the nerves of those of us who use it, and there will inevitably be posts by people defending LJ, and then ridiculous anti-LJ evangelizing posts (as if anyone commenting on Slashdot doesn't know their way around blogs).
If you're posting anti-LJ jokes, please try to make them funny. And if you see useful information about the exploits, mod it up.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.