Cyber attack was not done by amateurs, says YÖK head

ISTANBUL

Gökhan Çetinsaya, the head of Turkey's Higher Education Board (YÖK). AA photo

The hacker group RedHack is a professional organization that is skilled in its craft, Gökhan Çetinsaya, the head of Turkey's Higher Education Board (YÖK), has said in commenting on a cyber attack on the body's website last week.

"We are not talking about two or three brats here. A professionally organized group has stolen documents and didn't leave any traces behind. This is not a good thing,” Çetinsaya said in an interview with daily Radikal published today. “It is a crime to illegally seize and publish documents."

The cyber attack also laid bare shortcomings in YÖK’s web security, as the website was reportedly hacked because it was using a weak password along the lines of “12345.” Çetinsaya said experts were working hard to improve the site’s security.

"The revealed documents contained cases which were already being investigated by YÖK. They were kept confidential due to the presumption of innocence," Çetinsaya said.

RedHack released over 60,000 documents it seized from the YÖK site, revealing hundreds of corruption investigations and documented incidents.