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If you downloaded Mint Cinnamon today (for versions of "today" that include February 20th, 2016) you should immediately check the MD5 checksum. Blog Entry here.
From Clem:
We were exposed to an intrusion today. It was brief and it shouldn't impact many people, but if it impacts you, it's very important you read the information below.
Hackers made a modified Linux Mint ISO, with a backdoor in it, and managed to hack our website to point to it.
As far as we know, the only compromised edition was Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition.
If you downloaded another release or another edition, this does not affect you. If you downloaded via torrents or via a direct HTTP link, this doesn't affect you either.
Finally, the situation happened today, so it should only impact people who downloaded this edition on February 20th.
Apparently the hacked ISOs are hosted on 5.104.175.212 and the backdoor connects to absentvodka.com. Both lead to Sofia, Bulgaria, and the name of 3 people over there.
The comment thread suggests that the ISOs are showing up in other places, and that the Mint site may still not be entirely secure.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Natales on Sunday February 21 2016, @09:45PM
This would not have happened if they distribute images via IPFS (ipfs.io) since the actual filename is based on the original hash and signature of the binary. Any change in the binary would refer another object altogether since files are immutable. The sooner we move to an immutable web for these kinds of use cases, the better.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday February 22 2016, @10:20PM
In order for security updates to be published, something has to be mutable. For example, this something might be the IPFS filename of the list of updated packages. An attacker could use IPFS to generate trojaned packages and then hack the site containing the mutable filename.