Database of a massive leak posted online claims to contain details
of almost 50 million Turkish citizens including country's president, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, his predecessor Abdullah Gul and Prime Minister Ahmet
Davutoglu.
The bulk data, which contains 49,611,709 records, appeared
on the website of an Icelandic group on Monday (April 04). The complete archive
of 1.5 GB is available for downloading on both Torrent and Magnet URL.
On the download page, the hackers wrote: "Who would
have imagined that backwards ideologies, cronyism and rising religious
extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable technical
infrastructure?"
The hacker also listed a number of 'lessons' aimed at
Turkish authorities including "bit shifting isn't encryption" and
"putting a hardcoded password on the UI hardly does anything for
security". Lastly, the hacker added: "Do something about Erdogan! He
is destroying your country beyond recognition. Lessons for the US? We really
shouldn't elect Trump, that guy sounds like he knows even less about running a
country than Erdogan does."
The unnamed hacktivist have posted data which is usually
included in a standard Turkey ID card. It holds the first and last names,
national identifier numbers, mother and father's first names, gender, city of
birth, date of birth, full address, ID registration cities and districts of citizens.
The Associated Press was able to partially verify the
authenticity of the leak by running 10 non-public Turkish ID numbers against
names contained in the dump. Eight out of ten were a match.
Turkish officials didn't immediately comment on the leak.
Experts speculate that data have been stolen from a
government agency managing data of Turkish citizens.
If the authenticity of all 50 Million records gets verified,
this will be one of the biggest public breaches of its kind, effectively
putting two-thirds of the Nation's population at risk of identity theft and
fraud.
The breach will be the biggest leaks after the one that
occurred in U.S. government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in April
2015 that compromised the personal information of over 22 Million U.S. federal
employees, contractors, retirees and others and exposed millions of sensitive
and classified documents.