14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical has decided to finally shed some light on Ubuntu Forums hack from last week and the company has detailed the intrusion step by step.
The Ubuntu Forums were hacked last week and 1.82 million accounts got compromised. Canonical has taken this intrusion very seriously and has released a comprehensive statement, after it managed to get everything running again.
Long story short, the hacker managed to get his hands on a moderator account, which he then used to gain access to a forum administrator account.
From here on in, he had pretty much free rein to do what he wanted, within the confines of that account. It seems that he was unable to gain root access and cause too much damage.
Canonical has taken the necessary steps to prevent this kind of intrusion in the future and it has collaborated with the vBulletin people to patch any security problems.
The Ubuntu Forums are now back online and everything has returned to normal.