cross-posted from: https://lemmy.cat/post/6385

It is currently possible, through Lemmy’s API, to create accounts automatically and without limit if verification by email address or captcha is not activated. I’d advise you to activate one or both of them NOW!

After registering x number of accounts (currently I could do thousands), all you have to do is list all the existing communities for each of the account to publishes one new post per community, or more. I’ll leave you to picture the mess.

(I apologise to the administrators of sh.itjust.works, I should have done the test with my own server.)

  • Pekka@feddit.nl
    3·
    2 years ago

    I was playing a bit with the API today and yea it might even be a bit too easy at the moment. You can easily use that army of Lemmy bots to upvote all your posts.

    We should probably make it very clear in tutorials and setup guides that no email verification is insecure and leaves your instance open to bots.

    • retiolus@lemmy.catOP
      1·
      2 years ago

      Stupid of me, I hadn’t thought about upvotes, but it’s clear that this is perhaps the most “quiet” and dangerous type of abuse.

  • PenguinLover@lemmy.ml
    3·
    2 years ago

    This is indeed not an ideal situation, but I guess on most instances this isn’t possible. I agree instances should require a captcha of some sort for signing up.

  • pitninja@lemmy.pit.ninja
    2·
    2 years ago

    I saw some small instance owners saying they were going to enable open registration and I couldn’t help thinking how bad an idea that sounded all around… For exactly a situation such as this inevitably emerging.

  • 𝖒𝖆𝖋
    11·
    2 years ago

    +1 to that. Also the email domain matters. It’s relatively easy to set up hundreds of disposable emails on random domains vs ones like Gmail.

    Phone number is another solid anti abuse signal. SIM cards are harder to come by in large quantities.

    • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Phone number is another solid anti abuse signal. SIM cards are harder to come by in large quantities.

      Unless they use something like a VOIP, or just spoof the number. If they can do that to call other people, there’s little reason to think that they could not use that information for registration.

      The other thing to consider is that in the eventuality of a data breach, you’re going to have the phone numbers of a bunch of users floating about, which is not ideal either.

      • 𝖒𝖆𝖋English
        1·
        2 years ago

        Right. I meant is the SMS-based verification of phone numbers - it’s not spoofable like the VoIP Caller ID. The downside is the cost imposed by the SMS gateway.

  • ShortN0te@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years ago

    Not sure how email verification should help. Just add a couple of line to role a email address and then open the verification link.