Crackers have broken into the servers at the Linux Foundation and forced the organisation to go offline until the damage is repaired.

And the officials at the Foundation say the breach of the kernel project servers and this one are connected.

In a notice available at the site, the Foundation says: "Linux Foundation infrastructure including LinuxFoundation.org, Linux.com, and their subdomains are down for maintenance due to a security breach that was discovered on September 8, 2011.

"The Linux Foundation made this decision in the interest of extreme caution and security best practices. We believe this breach was connected to the intrusion on kernel.org."

The Foundation is the employer of Linus Torvalds and also promotes the use of Linux.

The notice adds: "We are in the process of restoring services in a secure manner as quickly as possible. As with any intrusion and as a matter of caution, you should consider the passwords and SSH keys that you have used on these sites compromised.

"If you have reused these passwords on other sites, please change them immediately. We are currently auditing all systems and will update this statement when we have more information."

"We apologize (sic) for the inconvenience. We are taking this matter seriously and appreciate your patience. The Linux Foundation infrastructure houses a variety of services and programs including Linux.com, Open Printing, Linux Mark, Linux Foundation events and others, but does not include the Linux kernel or its code repositories."

Foundation chief Jim Zemlin has been contacted for comment.