I thought this might be of interest to other users as well as admins.
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$5 hammer go brrrrrr
Unfortunately, at the time of the raid, our admin was troubleshooting an issue and working with a backup copy of the Kolektiva.social database. This backup, dated from the first week of May 2023, was in an unencrypted state when the raid occurred and it was seized, along with everything else.
The database is the heart of a Mastodon server. A database copy such as the one seized may include any of the following user data, in this case up to date as of early May 2023:
– User account information like the e-mail address associated with your account, your followers and follows, etc. – All your posts: public, unlisted, followers-only, and direct (“DMs”). – Possibly IP addresses associated with your account – IP addresses on Kolektiva.social are logged for 3 days and then deleted, so IP addresses from any logins in the 3 days prior to the database backup date would be included. – A hashed (“encrypted”) version of your password.
In case you thought you were safer doing any illegal stuff here, yikes.
Good article. I’m curious, what warranted a warrant for the FBI to seize the DB and other things?
How can any Fediverse instance withstand that kind of force? Really the only way is to not save anything, or perhaps some sort of blockchain for all the comments and posts?
That’s an interesting question. At the time being, I think the only way is to do regular backups and store them at a friends for example. That way an instance can be restored after the server has been taken.
Really the only way is to not save anything, or perhaps some sort of blockchain for all the comments and posts?
Blockchain is an interesting thought - or maybe something similar to Matrix. All instances have their own copy of a post and sync with each other. That way it doesn’t matter if one instance disappears. Though, that would probably not comply with the Fediverse idea? Interesting thought experiment non the less!
