Hackers retaliate as Turkey’s censorship tightens
Drama is continuing to unfold in Turkey.
After website access outages and slowdowns on June 3rd for a variety of Google web services, the Ankara Public Prosecutor requested government IP blocking yesterday to be placed on 44 IP addresses associated with further YouTube and Google services. The Turkish court granted the IP blocks, and the string of inaccessibility has increased.
It seems that today, in outrage, hackers have launched Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks on the websites of three government agencies responsible for internet censorship in Turkey: The Ministry of Transportation, Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), and The Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB)
The sites have been reported inaccessible due to the confirmed DDoS attacks, and a press release from the hackers (who have not identified themselves) stated that the attack would last 10 hours and end at 11am local time. While the government announced that the attack had only lasted a duration of 30 minutes, Dr. Yaman Akdeniz conrfirmed on his esteemed CyberLaw Blog that the inaccessibility to those three government sites lasted almost exactly the 10 hours, and came back online at 11:05 am. Clearly, the government was embarrassed by their own inability to limit these attacks, but that means that this “protest” definitely made its point.
In the press release, the unidentified hacker(s) declared the DDoS to be in response to the Turkish government’s expanding Internet censorship policies and actions. The release said that the attack would end at 11am as sign of goodwill, that there aim to merely protest but not harm with this dramatic move. The statement was, in total, very polite and respectful, yet drove home the point that a government that monopolizes the information that can reach its people is a danger.
After past tweets from the Turkish President showed his dislike of youtube and google bans, and the clear public concern over this issue, it is clear that this conflict is far from over.
About the Author: Alex Fayette
Alex is a Junior at Yale University who is currently an intern with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society @ Harvard Law School. His focus this summer is with Herdict.org and also with other Berkman projects falling under the Freedom of Expression umbrella. He is majoring in Economics and Physics, and loves singing and aviation on the side.
