Canonical's Ubuntu repos on Github hacked

Canonical Ltd, the company behind the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, has had its software repositories on Github hacked by unknown attackers.

The hack appears to be limited to a defacement, with 11 new repos sequentially named CAN_GOT_HAXXD_1, `with no existing data being changed or deleted.

A Canonical spokesperson confirmed the attack to iTnews.

"We can confirm that on 2019-07-06 there was a Canonical owned account on GitHub whose credentials were compromised and used to create repositories and issues among other activities.

"Canonical has removed the compromised account from the Canonical organisation in GitHub and is still investigating the extent of the breach, but there is no indication at this point that any source code or PII was affected," the spokesperson said.

"Furthermore, the Launchpad infrastructure where the Ubuntu distribution is built and maintained is disconnected from GitHub and there is also no indication that it has been affected.

"We plan to post a public update after our investigation, audit and remediations are finished.," she added.

In May 2019, internet Git repositories Github, Atlassian and Gitlab users were attacked by hackers scanning for accidentally exposed credentials.

In those attacks, several repositories were wiped, although most affected users were able to restore them from backups.