Turkish hackers took over a Russian Govt Instagram account

Alleged Turkish hackers have taken over the Russian Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov’s Instagram account.

Events in the cyberspace are strictly correlated with facts in the real life, in many cases, disputes between countries are associated with numerous cyber events that could be analyzed by intelligence analysts.

The recent crisis in Crimea between Russia and Ukraine is just an example, today we will analyze evidence of ongoing dispute between Russia and Turkey following the shooting down of the Russian aircraft in Syria.

Russia is accusing the Turkish Government of supporting the ISIS and its dirty affairs with the oil smuggling, the Russian intelligence is collecting the evidence of support provided by the Turkish officials to the members of the IS.

In the cyberspace Turkish hackers started their offensive against Russian targets, news of the day is that a Turkish hacking crew, The Börteçine Cyber Team, took over the Russian minister’s Instagram account this morning.

The Börteçine Cyber Team compromised the Russian Communications and Mass Media Minister Nikolai Nikiforov’s Instagram account. The hackers replaced images shared by Nikiforov with the picture of a Turkish flag, of the Russian Su-24 jet shot down by the Turkish air force, and a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic.

“Hacked by Bortecine Siber Tim,” read the caption under the pictures added by the hackers.

At the time I was writing the Turkish hackers are still controlling the account.

This attack comes a few days after Turkish hackers belonging to the group called Ayyildiz announced its intent to attack Russian websites. The same group also claimed to have compromised one of the websites managed by the Anonymous collective.

On the other side Anonymous hackers have claimed credit for taking down nearly half a million Turkish domains in December launching with a series of major DDoS attacks. Anonymous waged a war against the Turkish to condemn its alleged support for the ISIS.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Turkish hackers, ISIS)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.