2 min Security

GitHub account hacked from Ubuntu-maker Canonical

GitHub account hacked from Ubuntu-maker Canonical

Canonical’s GitHub account has been hacked. Canonical is the company behind the Ubuntu Linux distribution. The source code of the project is secure, according to the distribution security team.

The hack took place last Saturday, writes ZDNet. According to the Ubuntu security team, the login details had fallen into the wrong hands. The account was then misused to create repositories and problems, among other things.

Canonical has removed the affected GitHub account and is investigating the scope of the hack, but there is now no indication that the source code or PII has been affected, according to the team. In addition, the Launchpad infrastructure where the Ubuntu distribution is built and maintained has been disconnected from GitHub and there is no indication that this has been affected.

According to a mirror of the hacked account, the hacker created eleven new GitHub repositories in the official Canonical account. These repositories were empty.

Not first hack

It’s not the first time Canonical has a security incident. In fact, the official Ubuntu forums have been hacked three times. This was in July 2013, July 2016 and December 2016. The first attack stole data from 182 million users, the second incident was the data from two million users. No data was stolen in December 2016.

In May 2018, a rogue Ubuntu package with a cryptocurrency mineral was also found in the official Linux distribution store.

However, the main problems occurred with Linux Mint in February 2016. When hackers entered the website, they were able to provide the source code of the operating system with a backdoor. Something similar happened in June 2018 at the Gentoo distribution, when hackers were provided with a backdoor version of some downloads.

Little to worry about

In the case of the current incident, there seems to be little major going on. If the hacker had added malicious code to Canonical’s projects, he wouldn’t have attracted so much attention to himself by creating new repositories.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.