Security breach hits Linux Foundation sites, down for maintenance

The latest victims of a hack attack are sites belonging to the Linux Foundation. Linux.com, linuxfoundation.org and www.kernel.org were some of the sites hacked yesterday. The sites have been taken down with a notice put up stating that the sites are down for maintenance due to a security breach. The breach was said to have been discovered on the 8th of September, this year. Kernel.org was the first site to be hacked and similar vulnerabilities are likely to exist on some of the sister sites. The notice also cautions users that any passwords that might have been used on any of the services might have been compromised. If those same passwords were used on any other services, it’s recommended that they be changed. 

Still down for maintenance

Kernel.org, the victim of the attack is critical to the Linux movement as it houses the Linux kernel itself. The servers are being completely reinstalled from scratch. There was some fear that hackers might have modified the code of the kernel. Kernel.org has made it clear that this isn’t the case. Each of the code files are hash verified, so no alteration can go unnoticed. A check will be done to ensure that no changes have been made. The news of this hacking might come as a surprise to some, as it’s popular belief that sites running on Linux are almost impossible to hack.

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