Hacking collective Anonymous this week claimed responsibility for a series of cyberattacks on Turkey, accusing the country of “supporting” the Islamic State terrorist group in Iraq and Syria and threatening additional attacks if the alleged support continues.
“Turkey is supporting Daesh by buying oil from them, and hospitalizing their fighters,” the group said, using another name for the Islamic State group, Hurriyet Daily News reported.
“We don’t accept that [Recep Tayyip Erdogan], the leader of Turkey, will help [ISIS] any longer,” the group added.
Multiple Turkish news reports said Anonymous conducted a weeklong Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) that took about 400,000 websites offline after they were overloaded with huge amounts of traffic.
To stop the attack, Turkey’s cybersecurity agency had to close off the country’s digital borders, stopping all foreign Internet traffic from accessing Turkish websites, Hurriyet reported.
Anonymous also threatened to launch more cyberattacks unless Turkey “stops supporting” the terrorist group.
“We will continue attacking your Internet, your root DNS, your banks and take your government sites down,” it said, Hurriyet reported.
“After the root DNS, we will start to hit your airports, military assets and private state connections. We will destroy your critical banking infrastructure,” the group added.
IT experts originally thought Russia was behind the cyberattack as Moscow and Ankara have been exchanging jabs since Turkey’s downing of a Russian fighter jet on Nov. 24, claiming it violated Turkish airspace.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had claimed that Mr. Erdogan’s family was involved in illicit oil trade with the Islamic State. The accusation prompted Mr. Erdogan to challenge Mr. Putin to either prove his claims or resign.
The U.S. has continued to refute Russia’s claims over Turkey’s relationship with the Islamic State.
A U.S. special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs refuted Mr. Putin’s claims that Ankara was profiting from an illegal trade with the Islamic State, explaining that the amount of oil smuggled into Turkey is “extremely low, has decreased over time and is of no significance from a volume perspective,” Hurriyet reported.
• Kellan Howell can be reached at khowell@washingtontimes.com.
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