Linux Mint Website Hacked /ISO's compromised

[indianacarnie]

"Last night, Some unknown hacker or group of hackers had managed to hack into the Linux Mint website and replaced the download links on the site that pointed to one of their servers offering a malicious ISO images for the Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon Edition."

Read more here : Warning! — Linux Mint Website Hacked and ISOs replaced with Backdoored Operating System
Warning! — Linux Mint Website Hacked and ISOs replaced with Backdoored Operating System

 

[lehnerus2000]

Yikes.

Luckily I downloaded my LM17.3 ISO last month.
I use LM MATE, so I guess I would have been safe anyway.

 

[indianacarnie]

I'm wondering if things like this are going to be a little more common because of the bruhaha surronding Win10? You know, so many people saying they will go to Linux instead of upgrading might make Linux more of a "target" for the bad guys. I have an older copy of Mint stashed ....... somewhere ...... guess I'll wait a bit before updating it.

 

[A Guy]

Hacker explains how he put "backdoor" in hundreds of Linux Mint...

Hacker explains how he put "backdoor" in hundreds of Linux Mint downloads

A lone hacker who duped hundreds of users into downloading a version of Linux with a backdoor installed has revealed how it was done.

News broke on Saturday that the website of Linux Mint, said to be the third most-popular Linux operating system distribution, had been hacked, and was tricking users all day by serving up downloads that contained a maliciously-placed "backdoor."

The surprise announcement of the hack was made Saturday by project leader Clement Lefebvre, who confirmed the news.

Source

A Guy

 

[Golden]

Looks like the Linux Mint forum database was also hacked and user passwords stolen...
The Linux Mint Blog » Blog Archive » All forums users should change their passwords.

 

[Night Hawk]

Linux Mint website hacked, ISO downloads replaced with backdoored oper

For all of you 7 users who also look at Linux Mint one of the more popular Linux distributions a new warning about downloads has been issued in this PC World report.

Linux Mint website hacked, ISO downloads replaced with backdoored operating system

If you downloaded Linux Mint on Saturday, February 20th, you may have grabbed a hacked version that includes a backdoor. Here's what you need to know.

Nick Mediati | @dtnick
PCWorld Feb 21, 2016 10:02 AM

If you downloaded Linux Mint on Saturday, February 20th, you may have unknowingly downloaded a hacked version of the operating system.


According to a blog post on the Linux Mint site, hackers broke into the Linux Mint website at some point on Saturday and made changes in order to direct users toward downloading “a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in it.” Using the hacked version could allow hackers to steal your private information. According to Linux Mint, the hack only affects those who downloaded the Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition from the Linux Mint website on Saturday.


“If you downloaded another release or another edition, this does not affect you,” the blog post states. “If you downloaded via torrents or via a direct HTTP link, this doesn’t affect you either.”
The Linux Mint website is down for the time being (aside from the blog, anyway) as the team works to re-secure the site.

The story behind the story: Backdoors are serious threats to your security and privacy in that they could allow hackers—or government entities, for that matter—to readily bypass security measures in place and access your personal data without your knowledge. So-called backdoors have been in the news a lot in the past week, largely due to Apple’s legal fight with the FBI, which wants the Cupertino company to circumvent certain security measures on a suspect’s iPhone.

see full report

 

[Indianatone]

Probably Microsoft paid for the hacker to do the nasty job. I would still argue Linux was more secure as virtually no one was affected by the pawned ISO files. As for the forum could happen to anyone.....

 

[Night Hawk]

Probably Microsoft paid for the hacker to do the nasty job. I would still argue Linux was more secure as virtually no one was affected by the pawned ISO files. As for the forum could happen to anyone.....

Joy Buzzer sounds! bbbbuzzzzzzzzz.... " read all about it! Linux Mint nowhere as secure as other distros! Still using outdated ubuntu and Debian code bases and doesn't see LTS!"

The fact that Linux Mint is relatively only about 5-7yrs. and grew in popularity from being aimed at the typical Windows user who doesn't intend to be any "Linux Geek" is one reason it would be easier to target as well as the fact that the site either sadly lacked in any type of intrusion protections or it may have had some inside help? Some 71,000 user accounted were loaded into the breach at the LM forum itself. And the motive was to set up a botnet for spreading junk!

As for 10 that has been showing itself to be a work in progress as MS is working things that should have been done with 8! But that would have meant the repeat of the Long Horn delays in meeting the 2-3yrs. schedule for each newer version. Vista saw numerous delays and why XP was the rave while without SP3 XP was another rush job that followed the MS flop!

What MS is doing with 10 on the other hand is building on where 7 left off only now with a dual platform OS. The entire OS build arrives as you would see any other Windows update. Being three versions newer there are some changes but not the gutted out stripped down frightmare 8 had been! And even MS won't mention 8 any more! Only 7 and 8.1! It must be a large embarrassment of something?:shock::roflmao:

 

[ThrashZone]

T's a tad funny

 

[Night Hawk]

Sorry! Couldn't help that one!

 

[Barman58]

Probably Microsoft paid for the hacker to do the nasty job. I would still argue Linux was more secure as virtually no one was affected by the pawned ISO files. As for the forum could happen to anyone.....

Obviously you have documented proof for this libelous allegation against Microsoft :sarc:

and the low numbers of users affected would more likely be due to the relatively tiny number of users of one of the many versions of linux that takes a 1% share of the OS market

 

[Night Hawk]

Exactly! Great points to make note of by Barman58 there!

MS is already a giant in the market place where it flexes it's muscles the most! They don't need to pay someone to trash any Linux site where only one site for only one of the smaller distros being effected wouldn't put any halt to anything to begin with!

The one thing to be sure of is that if anyone here had been on the site last weekend the simple solution if not already having caught the bug would be to toss the download without any hesitation! The iso simply sitting in a folder wouldn't a be any problem still. But when having forgotten about seeing the download gone for good and then going to run a VM or create a live stick out of a flash drive made bootable you risk a change of spreading something to the Windows host.

As for the site being down they will now want to very thorough going over all security measures to keep something like this from happening again. So you know they will be keeping busy for a good while there wanting to tighten things up on their security levels after this.

 

[Arc]

​

:roflmao: :roflmao:

 

[ThrashZone]

An eye for details

 

[Indianatone]

Probably Microsoft paid for the hacker to do the nasty job. I would still argue Linux was more secure as virtually no one was affected by the pawned ISO files. As for the forum could happen to anyone.....

Obviously you have documented proof for this libelous allegation against Microsoft :sarc:

and the low numbers of users affected would more likely be due to the relatively tiny number of users of one of the many versions of linux that takes a 1% share of the OS market

It was SARCASM........

 

[Night Hawk]

aawwww really?! I'm quite sure they are more then used to it! And they are actually a good job with 10 so far but just how they are bringing in the new version has many up in arms over it!

Yet even with the 10 at first for reserving your free copy and ever since the first of this month the new look showing two buttons the first for immediate upgrade and the second for delayed upgrade you still see the large "X" up the upper right hand corner to close it out. It still requires a degree of user interaction there!

 

[groze]

You also can't get infected by patching your already good Mint desktop

Just for the records according to this article, the updates/patching to Linux mint are not affected.


What I am confused on, is the mirror.

If you tried to download Linux Mint directly from the Mint web site or from BitTorrent, you're safe

I never seen a direct link to downloads only links to mirrors, wouldn't that quoted statement be an incorrect statement?

That site does give you a link to see if you have be compromised.

Barman58 You can delete my other thread http://www.sevenforums.com/security-news/392100-has-your-linux-mint-desktop-been-backdoored.html if you want.

 

[Night Hawk]

The alternate sites are for those who are not making a contribution by way of Paypal when going to get the latest. You will be confronted with the options for the amount when first going to click the download button. The same is also seen at the ubuntu main site as well.

For any previous release simply run a Bing and you will still find a number of alternate places to download the previously released versions. Cnet still had the 10.00 version seen there! Softpedia however has the 17.3 in three links seen at Download Linux Mint 17.3

Since the 17.3 was out for a month or so and only the main sites download servers got trashed you should be all set. Softpedia is also known to be a clean site for just about anything else there as well.

 

[Layback Bear]

I have been thinking. I will try to be careful.

First off I have tried 4 different Linux and haven't found one that went right.

Linux to me is like a lot of other things that are just as good or better that Microsoft product. The just as good products are free. Another example would be Open Office.

Here is where the thinking part comes in.
If such things are free and just as good as Microsoft products why isn't everybody using them?

Okay I'm done thinking for a while. I will have to take a aspirin.

As per the article; anything can be hacked. It just took a while for the hackers to attack low user volume programs.
I'm quite sure if Microsoft was going to hack other peoples products they have enough knowledge within to do it their own hacking.
Why would Microsoft waist the time and money to do such a thing? They have got W-10 to fix.

 

[Night Hawk]

They only run in VMs on any Windows machine! to answer that one while some apps are not so glorious as all that when compared against various MS products. Don't forget some of those MS apps are not exactly MS but 3rd party tools like Adobe Reader and Flash Player as two prime examples of how MS will integrate 3rd party stuff as part of the package or seen later as optional updates if not download from the MS Download Center.

The Sysinternals suite as well as other things have to be downloaded separately when the need for it is there. That includes the Disk2VHD tool just used here to see a Hyper-V VM of the 10 drive created. The only problem however is that you don't see any compression to reduce the size of one down since this one was just over 700gb on disk! https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062.aspx