Furthermore, those files and their associated hashes exist in numerous places: on the kernel.org machine and its mirrors as well as on the hard drives of many thousand kernel developers, distribution maintainers and others involved with kernel.org, the site adds.

"Any tampering with any file in the kernel.org repository would immediately be noticed by each developer as they updated their personal repository, which most do daily."

'No Need to Worry'

Jonathan Corbet, executive editor at LWN.net and a Linux kernel contributor, had similarly reassuring words.

While admitting that the breach was "disturbing and embarrassing," Corbet that "there is no need to worry about the integrity of the kernel source or of any other software hosted on the kernel.org systems.