Report: Russian hackers target Turkish domain provider

Several Turkish media outlets have reported that Russian hackers are behind the ongoing cyberattacks targeting NIC.TR, a domain name provider distributing domain names with Turkey's domain name extension "tr."

The first attack was reported on Dec. 14 against NIC.TR servers operated by the Middle Eastern Technical University (METU) in Ankara and crippled websites with Turkey-registered domain names.

Though the exact source of the attacks is not known, Russian hackers are prime suspects according to media reports based on discussions in Turkish hacker forums. Suspicion of Russian involvement is high probability, experts say, especially in the light of recent developments that have strained relations between Turkey and Russia. Turkey's downing of a Russian fighter jet violating its airspace in November angered the Kremlin. Russia has responded with the introduction of a set of sanctions against Turkey and has demanded an apology from Turkey, which was flatly rejected by Ankara, insisting on its right of sovereignty and pointing out that Russia was warned repeatedly not to violate its airspace.

Officials from the National Computer Emergency Response Center, a state-run watchdog against cybercrimes, told Sabah the attacks that brought a slowdown in access to Turkey-registered websites especially over the past two days were "stopped" and "the situation was under control."

Sabah reported that Russian hackers were also backed by Iranian hackers in cyberattacks and claimed hackers had the Russian state's support.

ULAKBİM, an internal computer network connecting Turkey's universities, was also the victim of the attacks, which dealt a blow to internal servers and the websites of universities all across the country. Other media reports said hackers also recently the targeted computer networks of private companies.

According to 2014 data from the American cybersecurity foundation, Arbor Networks, Turkey is "above the global average" in terms of being a victim of cyberattacks. Attacks against Turkey have mostly been carried out by Russia, the United States and Switzerland, or rather hackers based in those countries, Arbor reported.