Users of Linux Mint, one of the best and popular Linux
Distros, witnessed a possible hacking on Saturday, after downloading and installing
a copy of its operating system.
An unknown group of hackers managed to hack the Linux Mint
website and affected the Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition.
Project leader of Linux Mint, Clement Lefebvre, confirmed
the news of the hacking in a surprise announcement. He said, "Hackers made
a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack our
website to point to it."
The issue will only impact the people who had downloaded the
Cinnamon edition on February 20 as the situation happened that night. If you have downloaded the edition before 20th
February, the issue does not affect you. Even if you downloaded a different
edition including Mint 17.3 Cinnamon via Torrent or direct HTTP link, this does
not affect you either.
On Sunday, Linux Mint also
confirmed that its forums database had also been targeted in the hack of
its systems. In the announcement, Clement said that the hacked ISOs are hosted
on 5.104.175.212 and the backdoor connects to absentvodka.com.
Meanwhile, anyone who downloaded the 17.3 Cinnamon edition can
find out if their computer has been compromised by checking the MD5 signature
on the ISO file to see if it matches with the valid versions.
If found infected, users are
advised to follow these steps:
- Put the computer offline.
- Backup your personal data, if any.
- Reinstall the OS or format the partition.
- Change your passwords for sensitive websites (for your email in particular).