RedHack had disclosed the identities of hundreds of foreign bureaucrats and diplomats via a folder on Dropbox. That Dropbox folder is also missing now.
Just 3 days ago The RedHack group, which has been quite famous with their cyber attacks and hacks against Turkish government web sites, stroke again. This time, their target was the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s website and they defaced a subdomain hosted on the website. But soon enough it was clear that this was not just a deface activity and a couple of hours later, The RedHack group disclosed the identities of hundreds of foreign bureaucrats and diplomats via a folder on Dropbox.
This hack gained a lot of attraction in Turkey. Turkish Foreign Ministry and the Embassy of The United States in Ankara, made a few statements about the hack and the disclosure of The RedHack. Those statements were pretty usual staff like condemning the attack or announcing that Ministry’s main servers were not reached.
Surprisingly that, The RedHack group’s Twitter account (RedHack Team) was suspended in less than 24 hours after wards their leak. It is really very suprising because Twitter has just announced its transparency report and that report shows that Twitter has not responded any of the requests originating from Turkish government or Turkish courts.
We also know that Twitter resisted or not replied lawyer demands numerous times from Turkey and popular micro-blogging site would not suspend a user account before seriously examining the allegations. But in less than 24 hours, The RedHack’s Twitter account was gone without disclosing any reason. Of course RedHack got a new account and quickly gained more than 10.000 followers but that new account seems to be also under pressure.
So, as turk-internet.com, we tried to reach both the Ministry and the US Embassy to get some answers about this hack scandal and the suspension of RedHack’s account. Turkish Foreign Ministry provided us some information about the event. But at the time of writing this article, we haven’t heard back form the US Embassy in Ankara.
According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, RedHack had not taken down the ministry’s main website but could only breach a subdomain consisting job applications. According to the Ministry that page did not contain any secret or critical information for the government. But some ID’s of 821 foreign bureaucrats and diplomats were published.
Officials from Turkish Foreign Ministry has explained us that right after they detected the breach, they informed The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TBTAK), Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK) and the Police Headquarters. And after the first investigations Ministry appealed to the Attorney General’s Office. They did not try to get in touch with Twitter or any firms.
According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s statements, it it clear that Twitter did not suspend The RedHack’s account because of a request from Turkish government or Turkish courts. And according the nature of the suspension (in less than 24 hours after the hacking) it is widely assumed among Turkish Twitter society that Twitter responded to a request from US Embassy in Ankara.
Twitter’s behaviour in complying with US Embassy’s demands in less than 24 hours causes a great disappointment and unrest among Turkish Twitter users. It is also seen as an act of hypocrisy, not responding to legal claims or requests from a foreign contry but complying with an order very rapidly from hometown.
RedHack is claimed to be a socialist organization formed in 1997. RedHack captured the attention of the Turkish people and Turkish hackers, right after the group successfully accessed the servers of the Ankara Police Department in February. Since then, they have demonstrated their hacking capabilities a lot of times and their successful operations gained a lot of attraction.
