Anonymous smashes Turkish Government as AntiSec rolls on

Anonymous

Anonymous has claimed some big hits on the Turkish Government, defacing websites and stealing data.

The group said it nabbed and posted data from around 100 Turkish websites, as well as leaving messages on 74 sites.

The actions were part of "Turkish Takedown Thursday" in protest against internet filtering laws due to come into force in August.

New laws in Turkey look set to censor certain content perceived to be harmful to young citizens. The Turkish Government has claimed the filtering will be optional for users, despite beliefs it will be mandatory.

"Our vessel recently encountered a Turkish Government frigate, a chance we could not let pass," Anonymous said in a post on the Pirate Bay.

"So we simply boarded their vessel (no need to fire any cannons, mind you, they never found out what happened until just now) and collected some booty."

The hacks also form part of the AntiSec movement, which was a project of LulzSec, a group some believe was affiliated with Anonymous.

LulzSec has now disbanded, but Anonymous has continued the AntiSec campaign.

Last month, Turkish police made 32 arrests in relation to investigations into Anonymous.

The arrests came after the hacktivist group claimed to have launched a successful distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Turkish Government, taking down a number of official websites.

This week saw Panda Security risk criticising both Anonymous and LulzSec, claiming the latter was guilty of "stupidism" rather than "hacktivism."

Tom Brewster

Tom Brewster is currently an associate editor at Forbes and an award-winning journalist who covers cyber security, surveillance, and privacy. Starting his career at ITPro as a staff writer and working up to a senior staff writer role, Tom has been covering the tech industry for more than ten years and is considered one of the leading journalists in his specialism.

He is a proud alum of the University of Sheffield where he secured an undergraduate degree in English Literature before undertaking a certification from General Assembly in web development.