Turk Internet: Can you name some of the reasons? For example can we say there are national aims or religious aims in Turkish hackers?
Mohammad Hluchan : Well, you have ideological hackers who hack for political reasons. You have these “Asiri Milliyetciler” (Extreme Nationalists), “Ataturkculer” (Kemalists) and of course you have other hackers who just do the farcement for no reason… Let me think what else you have… You have certain hackers who have Islamicaly oriented political motivations. I call them “yesil sapkali hackerlar” (green hat hackers).
As you know there are white hat hackers and black hat hackers…You know the whole deal so green hat hackers is a new category I kind of added impromtu to describe this category of hackers. The reason why the hackers motivated by religious, specifically Islamic motives, are common all through the Middle East is a very interesting socio-political phenomenon actually going on.
You don’t see an equivalent of that in the American or European scene for example. You don’t see a quite equivalent scene. It’s a unique institution, a unique socio-cultural development in the hacking world in this part of the world in Middle East.
Turk Internet: Then can we name money is the least important thing for the Turkish hackers?
Mohammad Hluchan : I would not say that it’s the case. You have many politically motivated ones, you have ideologically motivated ones and you even have some PKK hackers. I think I recently read that there was a set of hackers who were detained in the Ataturk Airport for trying to hack into systems that were used to fly remote control drone aircraft to Iran.
But money is also definitely a motivation for some. You have people like aatay Evyapan. I like to mention him every time, it’s like my favorite story. There is Mustafa Aydin of course who was in Izmir last year. And there is another one arrested in Antalya. There was a foreign hacker and police caught him. So you have all these people who are motivated by money.
And I should mention that some of these Turkish hackers, specifically ones motivated by money, have ties with Russian and Ukrainian hackers. They have a community of people online who are trading stolen bank and credit card credentials.
Turk Internet: I was just also coming to there. What do you think about the collaboration between hackers?
Mohammad Hluchan. It’s certainly there.
Turk Internet: In which countries?
Mohammad Hluchan : Well Russia is definitely one which is there because there are many Turks who know different levels of Russian language. So there is some cooperation going on. I remember a story, I think it was last year. Last year there was a Syrian, Azerbaijani, Turkish gang that was captured doing a rather small skilled credit card credential theft in Turkey.
They were arrested by Turkish police, IT crimes department. And I think also Mustafa Aydin, if you recall his case, had some involvement from Azerbaijan and he fled to Azerbaijan for a while.
Turk Internet: So there is a strong collaboration?
Mohammad Hluchan : There are collaborations with neighboring countries. So there is a collaboration and you have Turkish hackers in these forms and doing what they do but just because they are Turkish hackers doesn’t necessarily mean they are in Turkey. Some of them are in other countries as we all know. There are international hacking forms in Middle East, US and Turkey itself.
Find the following part of this interview at : Hluchan : Chinese Hacker Soldiers Sitting in Front of a Computer, Instead of Carrying a Gun – 3
See the Turkish translation of this interview at : Hluchan : – Trk Hackerlar Arasnda Motivasyonu Politik Olanlar kadar, Para Olanlar da Var – 2 link.
