New York Times warns freelancers of GitHub repo data breach
bleepingcomputer.com
- The New York Times suffered a breach of its GitHub repositories in January 2024, leading to the theft and leak of sensitive personal information of freelancers.
- Attackers accessed the repos using exposed credentials, but the breach did not impact the newspaper's internal systems or operations.
- The stolen data, amounting to 273GB, was leaked on 4chan and included various personal details of contributors as well as information related to assignments and source code, including the viral Wordle game.
GitHub sucks with private repositories anyways. If any company needs a sizable source control utility, just hosting their own GitLab instance will be way cheaper and safer than entrusting it to Microsoft and paying an unnecessary enterprise rate to GitHub.
Hot take: GitLab is sluggish, buggy, crap. It is the "Mega Blocks" of source control management.
If you have source files that are more than a few hundred lines and you try to load them on the web interface, forget about it.
They can't even implement 2FA in such a way that it isn't a huge pain to interact with. There's been an open issue for over 7 years now to implement 2FA like it is everywhere else, where you can be signed in to more than one device at a time if you have 2FA enabled (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/16656).
Not to mention this was not a GitHub failure, this was a failure by the NYTimes to secure their developer's credentials. This "just in house/self host everything and magically get security" mentality that's so prevalent on Lemmy is also just wrong. Self hosting is not a security thing, especially when you're as large of a target as NYTimes. That one little misconfiguration in your self hosted GitLab instance ... the critical patch that's still sitting in your queue ... that might be the difference between a breach like this and protecting your data.
I will never use GitLab after seeing CVE-2023-7028. It should simply not have been possible with any reasonable security posture. I do not want their software running on my machines.
Jesus Christ... That's a doozy.
Yikes, thanks for sharing that one!
Forgejo?
I self host Forgejo for a pretty long time now. I put my personal stuff there and if something seems like the public might like it I mirror it to GitHub and Codeberg. Forgejo is amazing and will be even more amazing when federation support gets stable.
Haven't used it first hand, but I think it's more promising.
GitLab sucks and has been getting worse. Their system requirements are high because they can’t figure out how to make efficient code.
I’ve since signed up but haven’t used GitHub, so I can’t claim if it’s better or worse. But I’m definitely looking for an alternative
I've been pretty happy with Gitea for small projects. I had to learn how to use it for because a client was already using it and wanted to upgrade to a more recent version. I was brought in just to make sure that it would work without introducing disaster, and that was my introduction to it. It's nearly completely brainless to run as a docker container and it seems to work just fine.
Forgejo is my rec.
Any particular reasons?
For one thing, more FOSS focused. It's lighter/faster for me than a self hosted gitlab, there is nothing hidden behind a paywall, they are working on some nice activitypub integration, actions are really handy (yes it's a bit of yaml soup), codeberg is using and supporting it, a better focus on security and stability than gitea (where it forked from), the ux is clean, and that's about what I can think of off the top of my head.
I’m down with all of those but possibly activitypub integration. Does that add to the product or is it a deviation from the core product?
Imo, an add.
Creating a bug report or feature request can be done without having to create an account, and the backend tools (including blocking instances) are being completed first.
It's not like it's forced either. You can just run it local and have no federation (once the feature is out of course, right now you wouldn't have it regardless).
Efficiency is not even my top concern with their code: https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/0-click-gitlab-hijacking-flaw-under-active-exploit-with-thousands-still-unpatched/
Oof
I mean if they’re really looking for security, you don’t have to trust GitHub to host it, you can use GitHub Enterprise Server to self host your own GitHub.
Hella expensive like you say, but, if you’re set on GitHub and the enterprise support they provide, there are options.
Didn’t read the article – but why are they mentioning “freelancers” specifically? Is there some kind of feature on GitHub to better promote yourself as a freelancer?
Freelancers who did work for the NYT, e.g. photographers.
Ah – I misinterpreted the title – thanks.
I assume since the freelancers are affected by the hack they were informed by the Times.
LOL same thing happened to Google. When will these people learn MS does not care about your data?
I don't see what Microsoft has to do with this. The article says the repos were accessed with stolen creds.
I don't know what "exposed credentials" are but if they were accessed with "stolen" creds there would be no "hacking", just logging in.
So... Unless Microsoft directly leaked those credentials, I don't see how it would be their responsibility.
...because they didn't adequately protect them?
It is not Microsoft's job to protect your password, it is yours.
Or did you assume it was GitHub itself that was compromised? The article doesn't say where the creds were obtained. My guess is plain old phishing. Though it could also be cred-stealing malware, that seems to be making a comeback, in the form of browser extensions and mobile apps. Either way, those aren't Microsoft's fault.
That's the way it reads to me.
Going back to my previous comment, if it was obtained through fishing, there would be no need for "hacking".
“Hacking” is a catch all term for security breaches, including phishing to the general public.
No it is not
Yes it is. You can be a pedantic a-hole all you want, but “hacking” includes phishing, social engineering and pretty much any other form of access control circumvention to the general public.
Edit:
Also from the article itself
Exposed GitHub token is very likely someone messed up and either exposed a token or was victim to an attack that could pull the token. Those are not uncommon and have happened to a lot of companies.
Assuming the writer is using the word properly is not being pedantic.
Reading the article proves your assumption wrong
[Citation needed]
My guy, the citation is this entire article.
Please point out where it states that Microsoft leaked it, rather than the more likely case of NYT leaking their credentials.
It doesn't say they leaked anything, it says they were hacked.
It explicitly says the credentials were leaked. If you're really going to insist the word "hack" implies something else, I'm afraid you're too far on the spectrum for me to continue this conversation. Cya!
I've already explained this several times and I won't do it again. If you're still confused, scroll up and read again.
This is "hack" like the kid that guessed your grandma's Facebook password is "ilovecats1953", "hacked" Facebook.
I realize that's possible but I don't have any information outside of what's in this article, so that's all I can speculate on.
Exposed credentials means that somebody got sloppy the password. So yeah, "stolen creds". Give the fact that a) NYT seems knows which credentials were exposed, and b) We haven't seen hundreds of other high(er) profile companies have their private repos breached, it is far more likely that NYT fucked up, and not Microsoft (which is what you implied, with nothing to back it up - other than a very narrow-minded definition of the word hack).
Oh they care about your data... they want to use it to train copilot.