linuxmint.com is currently offline. It was taken down intentionally to prevent any risk to people who are downloading the 64bit Mint Cinnamon .iso
The site was hacked so that the Cinnamon .iso download came from IP 5.104.175.212. (Which is not Mint)
That IP address is linked to Verdina Ltd. in Belize. The contact person given in whois is Lyubomir Bambov with an address in Sofia.

WHOIS info:
http://www.whois.com/whois/5.104.175.212


The 64bit 17.3 Cinnamon and 64bit 17.3 Cinnamon nocodecs were affected
There was no problem with the 64 bit OEM version.
It did not affect 17.2 or 17.3 Cinnamon 32 bit, and did not affect any other Desktop than Cinnamon.

Wow. Any news when it will be up again?
And who is this Lyubomir guy by the way? Did somebody denounce him already?

Sorry, I have no info on those questions.
They have been offline now for about 20 hours.

More here in an earlier thread,,,

The first-hand information is here.

user Says:
so did you bother to track the back door? where does the rabbit hole lead?

Clem: The fake ISO in Sofia, the OS backdoor in Sofia also, the guy accessing our server via the second backdoor from Russia, but when you look at a hole and see somebody looking at you, you need to figure out who knows more than the other, and if we’re reacting to their actions it was pretty clear we had to take everything down. The hacker from Russia (could be a VPN of course) even DDOSed my personal IP to prevent me from taking the site down. He also took down part of his set up since.

I commend Mint for dealing with this proactively.

linuxmint.com is back online - with .iso downloads available.
forums.linuxmint.com still down.