Here is a bad news coming from Linux Mint. Today Clem, member of Linux Mint community posted that ISOs of Linux Mint 17.3 were hacked on 20th of February, 2016. Yes! You heard that right. It’s something that teaches lesson to all those who don’t check MD5 hash to confirm that the image they downloaded are original and not hacked one.
Well if you downloaded Linux Mint 17.3 then you should immediately do the following things to be safe.
Linux Mint 17.3 ISOs Hacked On 20th February 2016
If you downloaded Linux Mint 17.3 on 20th, Feb 2016 then it is the hacked one. If you doubt then you can check it using MD5 hash provided by Linux Mint team for Linux Mint 17.3.
How To Check If Your ISO Is Hacked Or Not
You can easily check if the ISO you downloaded is original or not by checking MD5 hash. To Check MD5 hash simply do the following through terminal. Open terminal and cd into the directory where your Linux Mint 17.3 ISO is. Type the command below followed by the name of the ISO.
md5sum yourfile.iso
If your ISO’s MD5 matches with the below valid signatures then your ISO is original otherwise it is hacked one and you should delete it immediately. If you have burnt it on CD/DVD then trash that CD/DVD. If you’ve created bootable USB then format the USB.
The valid signatures are below:6e7f7e03500747c6c3bfece2c9c8394f linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-32bit.iso
e71a2aad8b58605e906dbea444dc4983 linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso
30fef1aa1134c5f3778c77c4417f7238 linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-nocodecs-32bit.iso
3406350a87c201cdca0927b1bc7c2ccd linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-nocodecs-64bit.iso
df38af96e99726bb0a1ef3e5cd47563d linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-oem-64bit.iso
For more information you check the original post on Linux Mint blog.