Users must use passwords containing 10 characters or more

Mar 8, 2016 22:00 GMT  ·  By

We believe that, by now, many of our readers are aware of the fact that, last month, the Linux Mint project was the unfortunate victim of a hack, which replaced the download links for one of the operating system's ISO images.

Besides that, the project's bulletin board database was also stolen and sold online for a few bucks, which means that all the accounts (usernames and passwords) were taken over too, and all registered Linux Mint users were urged to changed their password at that point in time.

We, here at Softpedia, have already covered everything you need to know about the Linux Mint website hack, and by now, the maintainers of the Ubuntu-based operating system have taken all the measures to ensure that all registered forum users are safe and that no future hacking attempts are successful.

However, the story continues today with a new message from the project's leader, Clement Lefebvre, who informs Linux Mint users about the implementation of new password policies for the forum board, which now requires users to use passwords containing at least 10 characters.

"Today, we’re implementing a final set of measures aimed at lowering the value of the information stored on our servers," says Clement Lefebvre in today's blog post. "If our data isn’t valuable, either because it’s hard to crack or because it’s simply useless, we reduce the scope and impact of eventual attacks."

Custom passwords are no longer accepted

In addition to implementing a new password policy that requires users to use passwords containing at least 10 characters, which must include lower and upper letters, symbols, as well as digits, the Linux Mint devs have also changed the way passwords are accepted for the community website of the project.

Therefore, the Linux Mint users should know that the community website no longer accepts custom passwords, such as passwords set by users. However, passwords can still be generated or reset. With this in mind, we do hope that Linux Mint will no longer be the target of hackers in the future.