Hacker breaks into popular website and injects malware into it's download link

If you're wondering why the download link on Xubuntu's website doesn't work it's because the admins had to disable it. You see someone broke into the website and put malware on it. So visitors using the download link would download malware.

I'm not saying that the admins of the website are incompetent. Hackers are smart and there are ways to break into a website. Even if the server is secured well a hacker can get into an admins personal computer using many methods such as social engineering, worming in through a security hole or a program or document they get online that is infected. The hacker can then use there access to the admins personal computer to get the login for the server. You can't assume no one can break into your server or website. Hackers are tricky and persistent. It can happen to anyone. So it goes to show you never really know if a website has been compromised. You can protect yourself by scanning ALL your downloads with Antivirus even on Linux (use ClamAV for Linux) and run checksums on software you download. And verify those checksums.