Turkish citizens are facing a massive data breach after the national citizenship database became the target of hacktivists. The data dump includes the personal information of over 49 million individuals, including that of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.
The leaked information spans some 6.6GB and is completely searchable. Although to be fair, the hackers claimed that they had to index the database themselves to make it easier to look for people. Aside from full names, the leak also contains the names parents, date of birth, city of birth, national ID number, and full residential address. In other words, this is a wealth of information for identity theft or social engineering.
The hackers announced their leak by advising the Turkish people to do something about President Erdogan, who has been embroiled in multiple political scandals including accusations of electoral fraud and tightening controls on the media.
https://twitter.com/dchest/status/716934572949299200
Downloading the file is a little risky, since it’s shared as a torrent hosted on an FTP server. Those curious enough to take a look should double check their security measures just in case. Some who have looked over the information are saying that the information is from an electoral database from 2008.
According to a 2015 census, Turkey has some 79 million citizens. This would lend some credence to the theory that the leaked database is from an electoral register as it would leave out a substantial number of people who are either too young to vote or are simply not registered.
[Source: The Register]
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