The GitHub account has been compromised and hackers are demanding a ransom of $230,000

According to CryptoglobereportsA hacker broke into the GitHub account, deleted the repository and demanded a ransom in bitcoin from its owner. Attackers threaten or expose code or use it for private purposes. At least 392 different GitHub repositories are said to have been compromised, and notes have been left on them demanding a ransom of 0.1 BTC (about $558) and an email proving payment was made.

The hacker also reportedly attacked other repositories like GitHub, including Bitbucket and GitLaB. Because some users' passwords were easy to set up or previous access credentials were compromised, hackers successfully accessed the stolen accounts and then deleted the code.

Github has issued an official response to the attack: "at this time, it appears that some of our users' account credentials have been compromised due to an unknown third party exposure. We are working with affected users to protect and recover their accounts."

Security researchers at Atlassian, Bitbucket's parent company, said in an interview that as many as 1,000 users could have been affected by the hack. At this point, it's unclear if any valuable code has been affected, since many repositories are public, and GitHub has a variety of bad projects that are largely unused.

In a security recommendation, Bitbucket said it would recover the affected repositories in the near future, while one victim said he managed to recover the affected code by "accessing the submitted hash."

No ransom appears to have been paid to the hackers' bitcoin addresses. As of press time, it had received a transaction for 0.0005 bitcoin, which made up its total balance. To protect users, GitHub and other services recommend a two-factor authentication approach.

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