Unknown hackers compromised Canonical account on GitHub

On Saturday, July 6, Canonical’s GitHub account, the developer of the popular Linux Ubuntu distribution, was hacked by unknown cybercriminals.

The Ubuntu security team confirmed this information by publishing a statement. According to the information provided by the security team, the attackers created their own repositories, and started other malicious activity.

”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,” the Ubuntu security team said in a statement.

Ubuntu representatives stressed that Canonical removed the hacked account from its infrastructure, and then initiated an investigation on the incident.

“Currently, there is no evidence that attackers gained access to source code or personal data”, – reported Canonical Vice President David Britton.

The developers also reassured users: the Ubuntu distribution and all associated code are completely safe. No traces of unauthorized access to Launchpad infrastructure were found (access to Launchpad is separated from GitHub)

The team is waiting for the completion of the investigation and clarification of all the circumstances, after which, perhaps, another official statement will be published.

In the hacked account, the hacker (or hackers) created 11 new repositories. Each of these repositories was empty.