New Delhi: Starting on February 6, a group of hackers who call themselves ‘Turkish cyber army Ayyıldız Tim' hacked Twitter accounts of several Indian public figures.
The people affected included BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, MP Swapan Dasgupta, journalist Pritish Nandy, and actors Anupam Kher, Nimrat Kaur and Abhishek Bachchan. All these accounts have now been restored.
The hackers posted pro-Pakistan and pro-Turkey messages from the Twitter accounts.
Messages like this were posted – “Your account has been hacked by Turkish cyber army Ayyildiz Tim. Your DM correspondence and important data have been captured. I Love Pakistan.”
Twitter immediately swung into action - "Our teams are working to resolve an issue affecting a small number of Indian users. We will notify affected account holders directly. Reminder: do not click on links in DMs coming from unknown accounts," Twitter posted from their @TwitterSupport handle.
But the question about the group and its motives wasn’t answered. Till News18 decided to contact and interview one of its members.
“Ayyıldız Tim is a Turkish cyber army that was founded in 2002. We are not hostile to India. We express the injustices in the world by hacking, and in the last 6 months we have been hacking social media accounts of Indian famous people. Our aim is to announce the voice of innocent people all over the world,” came the reply from a Twitter handle @ayt noyan.
This Twitter handle was tagged in most of the hacked Twitter handles and has now been suspended.
The hacker claimed to be part of the hackers’ group ‘Ayyildiz Tim’ founded in 2002, and claimed that his group has hacked “an unlimited number of internet sites”. The hacker went on to boast of capability to “enter the database of many countries. With a cyber-attack on a country, we can hurt billions of dollars. Previously, we had an attack on the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.” He added, “The politicians are our target. We have found DM correspondence that will cause sensation in many countries.”
Ayyıldız Tim has been held responsible, and has claimed credit for, hacking into various accounts including some conservative US political figures and reporters, accounts of people followed by the US President Donald Trump and a former adviser to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The group does not have any political views, the hacker clarified. The hacker also gave a hint about the manner in which the group hacked into people’s Twitter accounts.
“We found this security breach on Twitter. We can hack accounts with some effort. On Twitter, we break the phone's security code to hack into people we know the phone number. We only receive private DM correspondence. We can also access deleted messages. We hacked many celebrities in America and Europe. Our hacking attacks will continue.”
When asked whether the group had a list or a fixed target of Indian Twitter accounts, they wished to break into, the Twitter user replied, “I cannot give you a figure but we will continue to hack until equality and peace are provided in the world. We have a lot of students to teach at the moment. When we retire, the flag will be relayed to them.”
The member of Ayyıldız Tim also threatened to break into accounts on other social media platforms. “After Twitter and Facebook we will attack your Instagram accounts as well.”
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