Cyber Attacks on Turkish Airports, Military Sites Coming: Anonymous

The hacktivist group, 'Anonymous' has threatened to hack Turkish airports, military assets and private state connections if the government does not stop supporting Islamic State.

The hacktivist group brought down 400000 Turkish websites that included government and police websites after hacked into Turkish servers in a week long attacks.

Websites of the government, police, leaders, private banks and major .tr domains were targeted, todayszaman, a Turkish news website reported last Thursday.

In addition to the shutting down of the websites, the Anonymous hacktivist group threatened to carry out more cyber-attacks if the nation continued to support Islamic State militant group.

Anonymous claimed responsibility for a massive distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Turkish DNS servers under NIC.tr.

Anonymous warned the Turkish government that if Turkey didn't stop “aiding” IS, the attacks would continue and target airports, banks, the government and military servers.

“If you don't stop supporting Islamic State, we will continue attacking your internet, your root DNS, 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 own hands,” said Anonymous.

The affected websites were able to return online only after Turkey’s leading National Response Center for Cyber Events cut off all incoming international traffic to the .tr websites, thus shutting down national “internet borders,” completely and denying “anybody outside the country access to Turkish websites,” Anonymous pointed out.

“This mass cyber-attack is known to be the biggest so far with the intensity of slowing down the websites,” ODTÜ Computer Engineering Professor Attila Özgit said as cited by Hurriyet Daily News.

The hacktivists claim the attack on Turkey was conducted within the framework of the counterterrorist cyber operation OpISIS.