Turkey is reeling under a massive cyberattack purportedly carried out by the hacktivist group Anonymous. The targets of the attacks include the websites of the government and banks. According to official page of hacker group, Anonymous brought down about 400,000 Turkish websites as part of war against ISIS.
According to local media, the Anonymous hacking group posted a message saying it would continue to attack Turkey for “supporting the Islamic State by buying their oil and tending to their injured fighters.”
Anonymous recently ‘went to war’ with ISIS after the horrific terrorist attacks in Paris, which left 130 people dead.
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Anonymous Brought Down 400,000 Turkish Websites
The two-week-long cyber campaign intensified over Christmas as scores of financial and state-run sites were experiencing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks resulting in crippling of transactions. Nic.tr, a non-governmental organisation that administers addresses for websites using the “tr” domain, said Thursday that the attack appeared to be from “organised sources” outside Turkey. The domain is used by websites belonging to Turkish ministries, commercial enterprises and banks. The attack has seriously disrupted the banking sector.
Anonymous Official Press Release To Turkish Government Leaders
“As many of you have heard, Turkey is supporting Daesh [Isis] by buying oil from them and hospitalizing their fighters.”
“We won’t accept that Erdogan, the leader of Turkey, will help Isis any longer. The news media has already stated that Turkey’s internet has been the victim of massive DDoS attacks.”
“Dear Government of Turkey, if you don’t stop supporting Isis, we will continue attacking your internet, your root DNS [the foundation of Turkey’s internet], your banks and take your government sites down.
After the root DNS we will start to hit your airports, military assets and private state connections. We will destroy your critical banking infrastructure.”
“Stop this insanity now, Turkey. Your fate is in your hands.”
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Anonymous group released a video claiming that they brought down the servers because of Turkey’s alleged ties with the Islamic State (Isis). Local media reports said leading banks such as Isbank, Garanti and Ziraat Bank were among the targets.
Turkish servers were bombarded for more than a week earlier this month, in what’s being called some of the most intense cyberattacks in the history of the country. The government was eventually forced to cut off all foreign internet traffic coming to ‘.tr’ websites – Turkey’s domain – to help stop the assault, according to Radware.
Turkey has been under fire in recent months for failing to actively stop ISIS, especially given the geographic proximity to Syria and Iraq. President Obama has put pressure on the country to secure their border with Syria, and U.S. officials have expressed frustration that Turkey has not stopped extremists smuggling oil.
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