In February 2016, a 17.8 GB data dump attributed to Anonymous exposed sensitive information from Turkey's General Directorate of Security. A separate, larger breach in April 2016 compromised the personal data of 49.6 million Turkish citizens. Read the full story at ESET Welivesecurity WeLiveSecurity
Hidden in the system logs was a file named whitelist_shell.php. Forensic linguists we spoke to believe this was a backdoor left by a system administrator who had been purged in the pre-coup arrests. The WLS allowed the uploader to bypass the firewall entirely. If true, this was an inside job dressed as an external hack. turkish police data dump 2016 exclusive
It was early August 2016. While international headlines focused on the Gezi Park protests and the coup plotters, a hacker or group of hacktivists—operating under the pseudonym "Lapso" initially, later linked to the "Anonymous" collective—began distributing magnet links on Pastebin and Reddit. In February 2016, a 17
The title was simple: "Turkish Police Data Dump 2016 Exclusive." The Whitelist Shell (WLS) Hidden in the system
Unlike the drips and drabs typical of state-sponsored leaks, this was a firehose. The archive contained approximately 49 gigabytes of compressed data, which expanded to over 170 GB of plain-text databases upon extraction. For any cybersecurity analyst, this was the holy grail of domestic surveillance.
Over 450,000 unique records belonging to active police officers, including undercover narcotics agents.