A somewhat secretive Turkish organisation, calling themselves Ayyıldız Tim, trying to position themselves as Ataturkism Nationalists, following Kemal Ataturk’s (the builder of modern Turkey) philosophy, seems to have done some random hacking in India.
They have hacked into the sites of a few lesser known news media organisations, such as India Press Agency –IPA Newspack and Commentwise. They have left a logo and a message on the sites, suggesting their action was part of Islamist movement. That they have moved into the sites with unreliable firewalls proves that the group has yet to develop a strategy regarding who to and how to target.
On their site (https://ayyildiz.org/#), they boldly announce their twitter account opening as: New Twitter Account Opened! (26.05.2017), proving that this is a very new phenomenon.
Their motto, “Beyond It Is Independence Or Death!” also seems a little overstated.
According to an IPA report the hackings were mechanical, probably just as announcements, and the sites were down for a couple of hours before their technical teams got them back and running.
The message the hackers left on the site are some as follows (Google translation) “prosecution is the time to visit every nation” (sic). “The CYBER-WAR will be appeared all the countries which not respecting Islam.”
There was no Trojan placed, with the hacking being somewhat aimless, deleting all physical files. The hackers, failed to breach the security of the database and the sites were up and running, according to IPA Editor-in-Chief Nitya Chakraborty.
The typical jihadi flag was visible even on their website which has made tall claims of being soldiers in the cyber world.
It says (Google translation, therefore everything is not correct): “Ayyıldız Tim, who has always existed since 2002, will educate 500 thousand Turkish youths as a cyber soldier. Our system will include new training commanders. The management team has been renewed. Ayyildiz Tim has not supported any party until this date and he never supports a political group. Ataturkism Nationalist As a group of faithful service to the country has been considered a duty. It is not partial to support the people who exist in the press of our country. He will continue to support anyone who is present at the head of our country, that is, the Chief Commander, on this day or tomorrow. Those who try to part with some of the actions that we do have to think about.”
There is a lot of political sentiment as well, saying: “Ayyildiz Tim is far away from racism, Turks, Kurdish, Alevisi, and Sunnis, and never allowed discrimination. Someone who loves this country for the benefit of the authorities like to know this country more than anyone knows this difference always need to see.”
Whatever the direction it seeks for itself, in trying to randomly target low value and loose firewalled sites, the “soldiers” haven’t really covered themselves with glory. And information has been a little misplaced, because if their support their commander, which is possibly the president of the country, knowing India having good relations with Turkey should have deterred them.
They need to be watched, because they just might mature into tech savvy cyber “soldiers” one day.
— India Legal Bureau