Turkey under cyberattack by Russia: Report

ISTANBUL

Several Turkish websites have been under cyberattack for four days, with Russian hackers claimed to be prime suspects behind the attack, daily Hürriyet has reported.

Among the websites who have been under cyberattack since the morning of Dec. 14 were those of governmental bodies whose extension is “.tr.” The cyberattack has brought about a serious halt in official processes as well as financial losses of private business organizations.

IT experts said a system that secures domains of the websites and operates under the Middle East Technical University (METU) Computer Center was also targeted in the cyberattack. Several other network and name servers were also targeted, they added.

Turkish IT professionals in response banned access to the DNS from abroad and communication channels were re-opened with the move. Around 400,000 websites of governmental bodies and private companies with the extension of “.tr,” however, were denied access from abroad.

Experts said it was hard to respond to these types of cyberattacks and there were not many solutions to the issue.

No reporting was made by the National Computer Emergency Response Center (USOM), a team of IT professional that intervene in nationwide cyberattacks, about the cyberattack. Authorities, on the other hand, have yet to issue an explanation on the cyberattack on national websites.

The degree to which the cyberattack occurred and its route implicates the attack may have been done by Russian hackers, though there is a lack of solid evidence showing this claim to be true.