Ubuntu Desktop 23.10 ISOs Recalled Due To Malicious User Translations

Hours after the release of Ubuntu 23.10, Canonical has pulled the ISOs and is re-spinning them after user-submitted translations for the Ubuntu installer turned out to contain hate speech.

Crowd-sourced user translations from a third-party tool that made their way into Ubuntu packages turned out to contain some (unspecified) hate speech. As a result, Ubuntu 23.10 images have been removed and Canonical is working to re-spin the ISOs with the translations corrected.

Ubuntu tweeted out a short time ago for what amounts to an Ubuntu 23.10 recall:

We have identified hate speech from a malicious contributor in some of our translations submitted as part of a third party tool outside of the Ubuntu Archive.

The Ubuntu 23.10 image has been taken down and a new version will be available once the correct translations have been…

— Ubuntu (@ubuntu) October 12, 2023

The Ubuntu Discourse goes on to add:

"Shortly after release we identified hate speech from a malicious contributor in a specific set of translations of the Ubuntu Desktop installer UI and have taken immediate action. These translations are being removed and an updated ISO will be available to download once we have replaced the offending material.

It is important to note that these translations are not part of the Ubuntu Archive and we believe the incident is contained only to translations provided via a third party translation tool we use for a subset of applications.

The affected images that have been removed are Ubuntu Desktop 23.10, Ubuntu Budgie 23.10 and the Ubuntu Desktop daily images."

So as of right now trying to download Ubuntu 23.10 is just being served for server installations and netboot tarballs.