Hackers have hit open source software development platform GitHub, removing code repositories and asking ransom from developers in order to restore their source codes.
According to a report in ZDNet late on Friday, hundreds of developers have had their source code repositories wiped
and replaced with a ransom demand on Microsoft-owned GitHub.
"What is known is that the hacker removes all source code
and recent commits from victims' Git repositories, and leaves a ransom note behind that asking for a payment in Bitcoins
The hackers claim all source code has been downloaded
and stored on one of their servers.
"To recover your lost code and avoid leaking it Send us 0.1 Bitcoin
to our Bitcoin address and contact us by email at, admin, at, gits-backup dot com with your Git login and a proof of payment,"
"If you are unsure if we have your data, contact us and we will send you a proof.
Your code is downloaded and backed up on our servers.
"If we don't receive your payment in the next 10 days,
we will make your code public or use them otherwise,"
A GitHub search revealed that at least 392 GitHub repositories
have been compromised.
Kathy Wang, Director of Security for GitLab,
was quoted as saying that they immediately began investigation into the issue."We have identified affected user accounts
and all of those users have been notified. As a result of our investigation, we have strong evidence that the compromised accounts have account passwords being stored in plaintext
on a deployment of a related repository,"
Jeremy Galloway, a security researcher at Atlassian, which owns BitBucket, told Motherboard that the company has seen a lot of users' repositories getting hit by these hackers.
