Breach, Data Security, Threat Management

50 million exposed in Turkish data breach

As many as 50 million Turkish citizens, including the nation's current and former presidents, may have been impacted in a data breach that was revealed to the public today.

An as yet unnamed group posted a database containing 49,611,709 records on Dream Market that held private information to include national ID number, addresses, birthdates and parents' names, said the Associated Press (AP). Turkey has about 79 million citizens.

The AP said a message accompanied the data: "Who would have imagined that backwards ideologies, cronyism and rising religious extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable technical infrastructure?"

Andrew Komarov, chief intelligence officer at InfoArmor told SCMagazine.com in an email Monday, “We have received information, that the bad actors on ‘Dream Market,' where previous data leaks were sold had placed the decrypted database of Turkish National Police there some days ago."

He explained that "previously, this database was published at https://turkey.thecthulhu.com/ with hashed data, but it looks like some bad actors are looking for the data from this region and that's why they have invested some efforts in cracking it.” 

In December Turkey the hacktivist group Anonymous took credit for hitting Turkey with a DDoS attack.

In the current situation the hackers highlighted the information of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, former President Abdullah Gul, and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

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