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Turkish Citizenship Database Allegedly Leaked Online (businessinsider.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the gift-that-keeps-on-giving dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Business Insider: The entire Turkish citizenship database has allegedly been hacked and leaked online. A website with purportedly leaked details of 49,611,709 Turkish citizens is online and allegedly gives the following details of each citizen -- including the Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan: National Identifier (TC Kimlik No), First Name, Last Name, Mother's First Name, Father's First Name, Gender, City of Birth, Date of Birth, ID Registration City and District, and Full Address. The apparent hack seems to be politically motivated. The website reads: "Who would have imagined that backwards ideologies, cronyism and rising religious extremism in Turkey would lead to a crumbling and vulnerable technical infrastructure?" The hack amounts to about 6.6GB worth of uncompressed files, which may make it one of the biggest data leaks of its kind in history. While The Register has also reported on the leak, some claim the leak has correct information but is just a decrypted version of data that was leaked over a couple of months ago. Specifically, the info contains data of Turkish citizens who voted in 2009 elections.

21 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. It's not even the biggest data leak this week by Nova+Express · · Score: 1, Informative

    That would be the Panama Papers, with more than 2.6 terrabytes of data on global financial asset hiding released, including documents implicating Putin and his cronies.

    --
    Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)

    http://www.lawrenceperson.com/

    1. Re:It's not even the biggest data leak this week by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      including documents implicating Putin and his cronies.

      Oh, don't worry, honey. Wikileaks is getting its hands on the full leak and will post all the 11.5 million documents soon. Right now only 149 documents were published, and they were obviously carefully cherry-picked for political reasons. Mossack Fonseca's clients are mostly western companies and individuals, especially from the US, including dozens of billionaires and politicians.

      The shit is going to hit the fan very soon. Think about Hurricane Katrina, except that instead of being water it will be feces.

    2. Re:It's not even the biggest data leak this week by jcfandino · · Score: 1

      The shit is going to hit the fan very soon. Think about Hurricane Katrina, except that instead of being water it will be feces.

      This is both Informative and Funny

    3. Re:It's not even the biggest data leak this week by KiloByte · · Score: 2, Interesting

      including documents implicating Putin and his cronies

      Which is the exact reason Putin's minions released this data now: to have the public talk about something else.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    4. Re:It's not even the biggest data leak this week by jandersen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Which is the exact reason Putin's minions released this data now: to have the public talk about something else.

      I'm not an admirer of Putin, personally, but I think we should try to be at least somewhat plausible when we accuse him of things. What is the general interest to us in the leaking of data from Turkey? They are not all that much in the spotlight, so as a diversion from the Panama leak, it is nothing, and while it is certainly inconvenient for Turkey, there is little in a citizenship database that is likely to keep Mr Putin and other embarrassed parties out of the headlines. Speaking of which - there is a lot of rich, influential people who have a strong interest in the Panama leak going away quickly - so why particularly Putin and not somebody else?

  2. Now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sounds like answers to everyone's secret questions is now online.

  3. Re:This is the future those Republicans... by WarJolt · · Score: 1

    The sad thing is that a majority of Americans on both sides are turned off by tech savvy politicians. The last thing they want to do is come off as being a nerd. Hopefully this will change, but it might take a decade or two.

    Wasn't it Hillary using her own personal email server?

  4. Public information by Doub · · Score: 1

    Why isn't all of that already public information? A couple decades ago most people were happy to have their address and phone number in phone books availabe to everyone. Hopefully this misguided paranoia will falter as fast as it grew.

    1. Re:Public information by scdeimos · · Score: 2

      Maybe it was different in your country but the "White Pages" telephone books never had full names (only family names and initials), social security numbers, dates of birth, etc.

    2. Re:Public information by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Why?

      Well... Hmm... I think the answer's in the lyrics.

      You can't go to Constantinople,
      'cause Constantinople's now Istanbul
      and Istanbul was Constantinople.
      Why? You'll have to find out from the Turks.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    3. Re:Public information by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Thanks for that. The only way to get rid of it is to listen to Gipsies, Tramps and Thieves.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  5. No phone numbers? by Streetlight · · Score: 4, Funny

    The database doesn't seem to show phone numbers. Those could be a treasure for Nigerian Princes.

    --
    In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
  6. Voting requirement by manu0601 · · Score: 1

    Correct me if I am wrong, but don't we need such database being public if we want transparent election process?

  7. "just a decrypted version of data" by Lieutenant_Dan · · Score: 1

    What do mean? Do you prefer the encrypted or incomplete version of the data?

    Anyways, the actual hackers pointed out that the data was just bit-shifted. That's pretty weak. This is like 90s-era movie decryption techniques that will occur on your monitor while you watch.

    --
    Wearing pants should always be optional.
    1. Re:"just a decrypted version of data" by peragrin · · Score: 1

      oh you mean like how they can guess a 10 digit alpha numeric code, out of sequence? Locking in each as they get each digit correct?

      Those were my favorites. I could never figure out how the encryption scheme worked for those kinds of codes.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
  8. Re:This is the future those Republicans... by catmistake · · Score: 1

    Wasn't it Hillary using her own personal email server?

    How else would you prepare for your MCSE? Experience is the best teacher, especially with the likes of XCHNG.

    --
    The Admin and the Engineer
  9. Some Analysis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Posting anon, for reasons that will soon be somewhat obvious.

    Through marriage, a significant percentage of my family is Turkish. So I downloaded and installed the database this afternoon to see what's in there.

    First off, the data appears to be accurate. Most of our (large number of) family members are in there.

    What's somewhat more interesting is who isn't there. Children under 18 are predominately missing. This is actually interesting, as it helps denote boundaries for the database. A family member who turned 18 in 1991 is present, but her younger brother who turned 18 in 2011 is missing. Another family member who moved in 2012 is still listed under their old address. A family member who died in 2008 is missing (as expected).

    With a bit of data conversion, it's possible to pull the youngest person out of the database -- their birthdate is listed as March 29th, 1991. As the database seems to exclude people under 18 (age of majority for elections in Turkey), this would potentially date the database to on or around March 29, 2009. Interestingly enough, there were local elections in Turkey on March 29th, 2009, so the thought that this might be an election database appears to be correct.

    On the downside, I have a lot of friends and family members to contact in Turkey to let them know their information has been leaked. On the positive side, I won't miss a birthday ever again...

    1. Re:Some Analysis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Addendum...

      This isn't a database of who voted in the local elections (as the summary suggests) -- or if it is, it has 'mistakes' in it. I've already identified one person from the extended family who was outside the country and didn't vote in that election who still shows up in the database. I'm still trying to determine if this is a trend, or if something slightly more nefarious is going on.

  10. Old news by fysdt · · Score: 1

    It's a database which dates back to 2010. It only includes citizens which were >= 18 years old back then.

  11. Old info by fysdt · · Score: 1

    Btw Erdoan lives in his brand new palace at Atatürk Orman Çiftlii, Cumhurbakanl Külliyesi, Betepe, Ankara, Türkiye. He doesn't live at the leaked address. See also: https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/...kanl_Saray_(Türkiye)

  12. Old data confirmed by Kid+CUDA · · Score: 1

    I know a few turkish people personally. They are on that database and I can confirm with 100% certainty that most of this data is from 2009.

    Still a dick move from the hackers. It's really irresponsible.