DB with records of 50 Million Turkish Citizens Leaked Online. Are they recycled data?

A database containing records of 50 Million Turkish Citizens appeared online in the weekend. Is it a new or a recycled archive?

Details of almost 50 Million Turkish citizens have been leaked online, the bulk data was hosted on a server with the IP address 185.100.87.84. The archive was published during the weekend, the publishers claim they it belongs to 49,611,709 Turkish citizens, the complete 1.5GB archive (mernis.sql.tar.gz – 1.5GB compressed – 6.6GB uncompressed) is available for download on both Torrent and Magnet URL.

The archive includes also the personal details of the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The above data is usually included in a standard Turkey ID card, but at the time I was writing it is not known the source of the personal information data is currently unknown.

It is not clear if the archive was populated with older data from other security breached, like the one that suffered the country in 2009.

Experts speculate that data have been stolen from a government agency managing data of Turkish citizens.

Below the message left by the hackers that appear to be politically motivated:

“Who would have imagined that backwards ideologies, cronyism and rising religious extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable technical infrastructure?”

Hackers have something against Erdogan, … and Trump

Lesson to learn for Turkey:

• Bit shifting isn’t encryption.
• Index your database. We had to fix your sloppy DB work.
• Putting a hardcoded password on the UI hardly does anything for security.
• Do something about Erdogan! He is destroying your country beyond recognition.

Hackers have found a baffling situation, it seems administrators hardcoded the password in one of the user interface they accessed.

“Putting a hardcoded password on the UI hardly does anything for security.”

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – 50 Million Turkish Citizens, data breach)