Apparently, the GitHub account of the Gentoo Linux distribution has been hacked, as evident by an announcement published on the distro’s official website. The hack took place on June 28 when “unknown individuals” gained control of the GitHub Gentoo organization.
The hackers modified the content of repositories as well as some pages. Gentoo is still investigating to figure out the exact extent of the hack, the announcement reads. Fortunately, users who haven’t downloaded anything from the compromised GitHub repositories are not in any danger. On the other hand, users who have downloaded something from Gentoo’s GitHub yesterday, they need to get rid of it as soon as possible and use the distro’s official website instead of the code hosted on GitHub.
“The gentoo GitHub organization remains temporarily locked down by GitHub support, pending fixes to pull-request content”, Gentoo added.
In addition, the team also reassured that the hack is not associated with the code hosted on the Gentoo infrastructure, underlying that:
Since the master Gentoo ebuild repository is hosted on our own infrastructure and since Github is only a mirror for it, you are fine as long as you are using rsync or webrsync from gentoo.org.
Control of Gentoo’s GitHub Now Regained
Fortunately, the distro has regained control of its account as confirmed in the latest announcement. Currently, Gentoo is working together with GitHub to resolve the issue:
Gentoo has regained control of the Gentoo Github Organization. We are currently working with Github on a procedure for resolution. Please continue to refrain from using code from the Gentoo Github Organization. Development of Gentoo primarily takes place on Gentoo operated hardware (not on GitHub) and remains unaffected. We continue to work with Github on establishing a timeline of what happened and we commit to sharing this with the community as soon as we can.
Milena Dimitrova
An inspired writer and content manager who has been with SensorsTechForum since the project started. A professional with 10+ years of experience in creating engaging content. Focused on user privacy and malware development, she strongly believes in a world where cybersecurity plays a central role. If common sense makes no sense, she will be there to take notes. Those notes may later turn into articles! Follow Milena @Milenyim
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