6 ms·

Did a Single Hacker, not Anonymous, cripple Turkey's Internet?

56 points by dsr12 11y ago

smaili 11y ago
tldr: someone used a DNS Amplification attack - https://blog.cloudflare.com/deep-inside-a-dns-amplification-ddos-attack/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/deep-inside-a-dns-amplification-...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
steinsgate 11y ago
This single hacker says his motives were political, and that he is not happy about Turkey's ongoing involvement with the ISIS. Did he expect the visitors to websites in the .tr domain to infer this crucial piece of information on their own? How can you effectively protest with an attack, if the purpose of the attack is not made clear to the public. IMO, the Anonymous video (even if it falsely claims responsibility) was much needed in this situation, assuming that the end goal is to raise awareness and mobilize people against the ISIS and its supporters.
- afsina 11y ago
  If this story is true, I think he is an idiot attacking the tr domain. Who is he punishing?. And really why? This is debated over and over but I am quite baffled with the allegations that government deliberately and purposefully aided ISIS, even today. I have yet to see any convincing evidence on this. Sources of such allegations are mostly from usual suspects such as Gulenists or pro-Kurdish far left circles. Last month Russia joined the club as well. Related news were published in Gulenist media (especially their English press) and Turkish Left leaning groups support it without questioning the motives because they share the same sentiment (hate for Erdoğan) and purpose (removing him at any cost). Erdoğan deserves a lot of the criticism but current "hate wave" against him is far from rational IMO.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - trhway 11y ago
    interesting that before Turkey/Russia conflict everybody knew and wasn't really bothered, ie. business as usual, that Sunnis in Middle East, primarily Saudis and Turkey, do aid ISIS. In particular, ISIS fights Kurds and Assad - thus doing Turkey's and Saudis' bidding (Saudis need Assad gone because he blocks the Saudi gas pipeline to Europe and this is one of the reasons why Russia has been supporting him all this time :). Turkey and Saudis are US allies, while the other side - Shia like Assad, Iran, Hezbollah - are enemies of US. Everything was going great until Russia moved in and pooped the party :) Beside global goals, like making itself important again by actively supporting the anti-US side, one of the practical Russian interest is in breaking up the flow of really cheap oil - from ISIS to Turkey to Ukraine's Odessa refinery (thus also hitting Ukraine too. In 2014, amid Russia/Ukraine conflict, Russia stopped sending its oil to the refinery, and that huge refinery has since then found another, even bigger source of oil, from Turkey :). Like Russia, Ukraine is a very corrupt state (and Odessa governor is the former president of Georgia - Saakashvili - with deep "business" ties to Turkey from his time in Georgia. It is very interesting story in itself on who, why and how put him into governor chair of strategically important large region of another, completely unrelated, country :) so nobody is asking questions about the oil provenance there, and as result there is 2 stage "laundering" of final oil products - first dilution of ISIS oil into "legal" Turkey oil and passing the result through the refinery (plus selling a lot of that cheap oil and its refined products into "no much questions asked" markets of Eastern Europe like in particular Ukraine and Poland. You may have already heard about extremely cheap supposedly Saudi oil hitting market in Poland. That flow of cheap oil negatively affects ("dumping" is the keyword here) Russian oil sales into these next-door markets and thus hits Putin's regime where and when it really hurts, and thus all this "cold war" between Russia and Turkey, and i personally have no doubts about who attacked the Turkish Internet :)
    - vdaniuk 11y ago
      I am sure you'll be able to provide reliable citations to authoritative sources supporting these curious claims, right?
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  Angry kids with a little knowledge and a lot of righteous rage are very, very prone to believing that the world's problems can be fixed by righteously destroying things. It's how Daesh gets so many recruits.
valdiorn 11y ago
No? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
lolc 11y ago
> longtime Anonymous members we spoke to [guessed] the account is run by Anonymous wannabes Great reporting, they also reached out to Subcommandante Marcos but he was unavailable for comment.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  I love how the press in general has been successfully trolled into believing that "Anonymous" is a centralized organization with membership lists or something. The clue is in the name, guys.
  - valarauca1 11y ago
    I'm actually thankful for this. It's a great way to filter tech journalists, and publications.
    - degenerate 11y ago
      I got a chuckle scrolling down and seeing "Whodunnit?" as a section header. It was nice knowing I didn't have to start reading the article to know its quality.
  - vijayr 11y ago
    Do they really believe what they write? Maybe it is just plain laziness and they are okay with being wrong as long as they can fill their quota of articles?
  - krapp 11y ago
    It is entirely possible for a centralized organization with membership lists to still call itself "Anonymous." It's become nothing but a gimmick that can be picked up by anyone, or any number of groups. Get some Guy Fawkes masks and hoodies and make threats on Youtube and put out press releases. Congratulations - you're Anonymous.
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
dawnbreez 11y ago
In my experience, anyone who runs an "Anonymous-branded" account is not only not actually related to "Anonymous", they're also missing the point.
- CaptSpify 11y ago
  Could be trying to pass the buck to script-kiddies though. If I were trying to stay actually anonymous, I'd let the "Anonymous-branded" account take the credit
  - dawnbreez 11y ago
    They do serve as a nice distraction, yeah, but when the "hacktivist group" is named for the default name on a website with millions of users and no discussion of or interest in "hacktivism"[0], you don't really have a hacktivist group. [0] I used to surf 4chan and follow various Anonymous twitter news feeds; I eventually realized that /b/ was full of edgy teenagers and most of the things that made Anons famous were sheer flukes.
eliteraspberrie 11y ago
I don't think it was Anonymous. During the operation against ISIS on social media, Anonymous tried to DOS one of the ISIS propaganda websites (Isdarat). They couldn't muster more than a few Mbps. This attack on Turkey is an example of Russian "active measures." Edit: By the way, the entire tr TLD is managed by a single DNS server at METU. That was the target of the attack.
Marcomasino 11y ago
NO, it was all those compromised Microsoft Windows desktops out there on the Internet.

56 points by dsr12 11y ago

tldr: someone used a DNS Amplification attack - https://blog.cloudflare.com/deep-inside-a-dns-amplification-ddos-attack/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/deep-inside-a-dns-amplification-...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

steinsgate 11y ago

This single hacker says his motives were political, and that he is not happy about Turkey's ongoing involvement with the ISIS. Did he expect the visitors to websites in the .tr domain to infer this crucial piece of information on their own? How can you effectively protest with an attack, if the purpose of the attack is not made clear to the public. IMO, the Anonymous video (even if it falsely claims responsibility) was much needed in this situation, assuming that the end goal is to raise awareness and mobilize people against the ISIS and its supporters.

afsina 11y ago
If this story is true, I think he is an idiot attacking the tr domain. Who is he punishing?. And really why? This is debated over and over but I am quite baffled with the allegations that government deliberately and purposefully aided ISIS, even today. I have yet to see any convincing evidence on this. Sources of such allegations are mostly from usual suspects such as Gulenists or pro-Kurdish far left circles. Last month Russia joined the club as well. Related news were published in Gulenist media (especially their English press) and Turkish Left leaning groups support it without questioning the motives because they share the same sentiment (hate for Erdoğan) and purpose (removing him at any cost). Erdoğan deserves a lot of the criticism but current "hate wave" against him is far from rational IMO.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- trhway 11y ago
  interesting that before Turkey/Russia conflict everybody knew and wasn't really bothered, ie. business as usual, that Sunnis in Middle East, primarily Saudis and Turkey, do aid ISIS. In particular, ISIS fights Kurds and Assad - thus doing Turkey's and Saudis' bidding (Saudis need Assad gone because he blocks the Saudi gas pipeline to Europe and this is one of the reasons why Russia has been supporting him all this time :). Turkey and Saudis are US allies, while the other side - Shia like Assad, Iran, Hezbollah - are enemies of US. Everything was going great until Russia moved in and pooped the party :) Beside global goals, like making itself important again by actively supporting the anti-US side, one of the practical Russian interest is in breaking up the flow of really cheap oil - from ISIS to Turkey to Ukraine's Odessa refinery (thus also hitting Ukraine too. In 2014, amid Russia/Ukraine conflict, Russia stopped sending its oil to the refinery, and that huge refinery has since then found another, even bigger source of oil, from Turkey :). Like Russia, Ukraine is a very corrupt state (and Odessa governor is the former president of Georgia - Saakashvili - with deep "business" ties to Turkey from his time in Georgia. It is very interesting story in itself on who, why and how put him into governor chair of strategically important large region of another, completely unrelated, country :) so nobody is asking questions about the oil provenance there, and as result there is 2 stage "laundering" of final oil products - first dilution of ISIS oil into "legal" Turkey oil and passing the result through the refinery (plus selling a lot of that cheap oil and its refined products into "no much questions asked" markets of Eastern Europe like in particular Ukraine and Poland. You may have already heard about extremely cheap supposedly Saudi oil hitting market in Poland. That flow of cheap oil negatively affects ("dumping" is the keyword here) Russian oil sales into these next-door markets and thus hits Putin's regime where and when it really hurts, and thus all this "cold war" between Russia and Turkey, and i personally have no doubts about who attacked the Turkish Internet :)
  - vdaniuk 11y ago
    I am sure you'll be able to provide reliable citations to authoritative sources supporting these curious claims, right?
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
Angry kids with a little knowledge and a lot of righteous rage are very, very prone to believing that the world's problems can be fixed by righteously destroying things. It's how Daesh gets so many recruits.

valdiorn 11y ago

No? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

lolc 11y ago

> longtime Anonymous members we spoke to [guessed] the account is run by Anonymous wannabes Great reporting, they also reached out to Subcommandante Marcos but he was unavailable for comment.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago
I love how the press in general has been successfully trolled into believing that "Anonymous" is a centralized organization with membership lists or something. The clue is in the name, guys.
- valarauca1 11y ago
  I'm actually thankful for this. It's a great way to filter tech journalists, and publications.
  - degenerate 11y ago
    I got a chuckle scrolling down and seeing "Whodunnit?" as a section header. It was nice knowing I didn't have to start reading the article to know its quality.
- vijayr 11y ago
  Do they really believe what they write? Maybe it is just plain laziness and they are okay with being wrong as long as they can fill their quota of articles?
- krapp 11y ago
  It is entirely possible for a centralized organization with membership lists to still call itself "Anonymous." It's become nothing but a gimmick that can be picked up by anyone, or any number of groups. Get some Guy Fawkes masks and hoodies and make threats on Youtube and put out press releases. Congratulations - you're Anonymous.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago

dawnbreez 11y ago

In my experience, anyone who runs an "Anonymous-branded" account is not only not actually related to "Anonymous", they're also missing the point.

CaptSpify 11y ago
Could be trying to pass the buck to script-kiddies though. If I were trying to stay actually anonymous, I'd let the "Anonymous-branded" account take the credit
- dawnbreez 11y ago
  They do serve as a nice distraction, yeah, but when the "hacktivist group" is named for the default name on a website with millions of users and no discussion of or interest in "hacktivism"[0], you don't really have a hacktivist group. [0] I used to surf 4chan and follow various Anonymous twitter news feeds; I eventually realized that /b/ was full of edgy teenagers and most of the things that made Anons famous were sheer flukes.

eliteraspberrie 11y ago

I don't think it was Anonymous. During the operation against ISIS on social media, Anonymous tried to DOS one of the ISIS propaganda websites (Isdarat). They couldn't muster more than a few Mbps. This attack on Turkey is an example of Russian "active measures." Edit: By the way, the entire tr TLD is managed by a single DNS server at METU. That was the target of the attack.

Marcomasino 11y ago

NO, it was all those compromised Microsoft Windows desktops out there on the Internet.