back to article DoS attack stuffs Turkey's internet censors

Access to the internet in Turkey is becoming increasingly ragged, as growing state censorship collides with retaliation by anti-censorship hackers, leading to difficulties both in viewing sites and applying key online functions. Earlier this month, The Register reported that multiple Google services including Google Translate …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. frank ly
    Happy

    Must Try Harder

    "..We are at present unable to locate the original press release referenced by Dr Akdeniz."

    Have you tried Googling for it?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Way to go boys.

    If the state censors, it's not a free or a civilised country.

    Period.

    1. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

      3 words

      movie classification board

      in other words, turkey is being stupid, but britain is not free and civilized either.

      1. Graham Marsden
        Thumb Down

        @Henry Wertz 1

        "britain is not free and civilized either"

        I don't think the previous poster said that (or implied it), especially since Britain certainly isn't until we get rid of nonsense like the OPA, Dangerous Pictures (and Cartoons) Acts and redefine the job of the BBFC to stop being nannies who will order nasty bits of films cut out and simply *classify* the films according to content.

        1. John G Imrie

          Re BFC

          I think you are being a bit hard on the BBFC, they don't order bits cut out of films so we, the UK public can not see those bits. They tell the file companies which bits have to be cut to meet a specific classification. If the film company doesn't care weather a file is a 15 or an 18 Cert. then they will ignore the requests needed to bring the down the certification from 18 to 15.

          There are however commercial reasons why a film company may wish to aim for a particular certification.

          Also note that the BBFC's certifications are advisory, its the local council that has the final say. Take fore example the first of the new Batman films, it got the first 12 Certificate issued by the BBFC, Muswell Hill, in who's Odeon I worked at the time, honoured the 12 Cert. Haringey Council, just up the road issued a 15 Cert.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    cracking :)

    keep up the good work boys!

  4. Ozan
    WTF?

    Taxes

    GOverment is after ta money from Google. they are using censoring as bargain chip. (it was on the prime time TV :)

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @frank ly

    "Have you tried Googling for it?"

    Actually that would be quite ironic, except for the fact that The Register isn't exactlty well known for the quality of it's research into articles it publishes, being mainly just an expression board for mealy mouthed failed reporters. ( I use the term reporter, loosely)

    1. Intractable Potsherd
      FAIL

      If you don't like the reporting...

      ... sod off somewhere else, or STFU.

      That is all.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Censorship = uncivilised?

    What a wonderful simple world you have. Obvious point but you ok with kiddie porn, rape movies, videos of beheadings etc. etc. I would guess probably not...so you probably would start censoring somethings. How uncivilised of you.

    Not that I have love of censorship and not that I'm unaware of its use as a tool for political repression but your sweeping generalisation is not really all that useful.

    Their censorship may well be "stupid", I don't know the culture and I'm not a citizen so nothing that really affects me, but to simply say that all censorship is the start of an un-free society is simply wrong. It can be seen as a neccesary evil but, unless you are happy with the (I admit extreme) examples I gave above then you end up having to employ some form of censorship. You then balance that power with rights which (at least attempt) to curtail the powers of censorship (right to free speech and association etc). Ho hum...rant over.

    1. Mostor Astrakan

      Censored.

      You've put your finger on the sore spot there. Rape, beheadings, child abuse, should not be happening to be filmed at all. Still, they happen. People should respect each other regardless of their station in life, the colour of their skins, what deity they choose to worship or not to worship. Still, we have racism and religious intolerance.

      Censorship seeks to sweep these and other problems under the carpet. Does anyone seriously think that scanning incoming posts for what is called, in hushed voices, "The N-word" and quietly disposing of them for the good of others, actually has any impact on racism at all? Do child molesters die when you disable their LiveMyFace account? No. What censorship does is to allow people to pretend that the Bad Things aren't happening, or worse, that The Government is Solving the Problem.

      1. Intractable Potsherd
        Thumb Up

        @ Mostor Astrakan

        Thanks for saying what I was going to say, but in (many) fewer words!

  7. asdf
    Unhappy

    so much for EU membership

    I can understand Turkey protesting Israels heavy handed BS but their gradual slide into a non secular muslim state will ruin any chance of EU membership (haha just another 3rd world religious country to bail out anyway but still). Still it is sad to see as Turkey as fought so hard in the last 100 years not to be another crazy backwater 13th century goat farmer Islamic authoritarian regime.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Google. should...

    move their Turkish Gmail servers onto those 44 addresses.

  9. Winkypop Silver badge
    FAIL

    Turkey should be a leader

    Turkey should lead the Muslim world in being a modern, open and progressive country.

    Have your religious beliefs, if you must, but let the people grow and think on their own.

    Otherwise it's just more fail for you and your kind.

    Mind you, Australia is setting a worse-case example and it's not even a religious strong-hold.

    1. TimeMaster T
      Alert

      How its been

      For a long time Turkey was just like that thanks to Ataturk, there was strict separation of government from religion. IIRCC there have even been times when the military has stepped in to prevent/overturn one BS law or another that tried to apply Islamic religious law to general government policy.

      Last I heard the Islamic conservatives in the Government have been slowly moving appointing/promoting their own pro-Islamic people into positions of rank and control of the Military. I don't expect Turkey to last long against that kind of tactic. It is happening elsewhere in the world currently and has happened in the past, and the results have never been good.

      It is sad that a country that has been used as an example of a progressive and forward moving country, issues with the Kurdish population not withstanding, for the rest of the Muslim world is falling into the same trap as the rest of the Middle East.

      I likely have some details wrong so if you know better please chime in with the needed corrections.

    2. James Woods

      you'll have to say that again

      Say what now? There is nothing about "muslim" that breeds any of what you started your opening with.

      Now perhaps "progressive" "muslims if you may" have their eyes open to being more mordern and open but the the dictionary term muslim is not what you stated.

      .au is not a stronghold yet perhaps but it will be as the muslims are trying to put one on every country they invade.

      Nothing against muslims or anything here, but the type of muslim your describing is like jews for jesus.

    3. Spoonguard
      FAIL

      Turkey is leading the way

      The target of this censorship is videos ridiculing Turkeys secular nationalist cult, so yeah, Turkey is struggling against suffocating theoacracy in favour of good old smothering Anglo-style fascism. But is it with the help or against that *Criminal* Court of Peace? Who knows, perhaps something was lost in translation.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Awstraya

      Well, that's not completely true. Our government does have a proportion of Christian fundamentalists, backed by "family values" style lobby groups. Our minister for miscommunication is one of them.

    5. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Australia

      Isn't that where Josef Fritzl comes from..

  10. Neal 5

    @asdf

    Only the first 26 words of your comment make sense. The rest of it is either a complete load of bollcks, or actual proof that intelligence has it's limits and stupidity doesn't. I honestly hope that the portion of your statement after the first 26 words were in jest.

  11. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Happy

    Might cause some annoyance in Turkey

    But how much work goes through these websites?

    OTOH were the ministries to find all outgoing calls on their PBX's barred they might find that rather more inconvenient.

    Just a thought.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    this is happening disturbingly frequently these days

    On the plus side, people are readily learning that the internet does not "work" for them unless they have unrestricted access to all of it. People are no longer going to say "well it'll only affect the peados/terrorists/blasphemers so I'm safe" because experience will have taught them otherwise. In fact it's the peados, terrorists and blasphemers that are almost universally NOT affected by censorship laws as their ideas were pushed underground to begin with.

    The internet is not concerned with pictures and video files, it's concerned with IP addresses, DNS servers and Routers. You can't just start yanking bits out and hope for the best. The ultimate irony is that the content you tried to ban will only end up being duplicated directly onto servers that are not banned by people who probably wouldn't have given two shits about it had you just left the internet alone in the first place.

    The internet is a tool for communication, not a tool for control. It was never designed with any capacity to control any person or data and cannot effectively be made to perform any filtering or censorship tasks. By it's very design the internet precludes censorship. If you are arrogant enough to join the internet, and then expect the other 1.7 billion internet users to fall into line with your way of thinking - well you can get fucked quite frankly.

  13. cyberrights

    Update on the DoS attack

    It is now confirmed that it was a DoS attack co-ordinated by a group of hackers to protest against Internet censorship in Turkey. A press release sent to the press stated that this was a systematic attack that lasted 10hrs. They said the attack would stop at 1100 local hour, and in fact the websites were back online by 1105. The attackers stated that they stopped the attack as a goodwill gesture, but the reason behind the attack was to protest against the unlawful blocking of access to YouTube and related IP services.

    The Ministry of Transportation confirmed the attack later in the afternoon but stated that it only lasted 30 minutes, and that they themselves managed to stop the attack. Nobody believed the government sources, and I personally followed the story from the beginning and confirm that these websites were unaccessible since early morning until 1105 today.

    Dr. Yaman Akdeniz, Director of Cyber-Rights.Org.

    The DoS Attackers Press Release in Turkish

    Kamuoyuna Duyuru

    Aşağıda sıralanmış olan sistemlere erişimi TSI 01:00 ila 11:00 arası engellenmiştir. Gerekçeleri aşağıda anlatılmak ile birlikte sadece bu saatler arasında erişime engellenmesinin sebebi iyi niyetimizin bir göstergesidir, amacımız kurumların çalışmasını engellemek değil aşağıda anlatmış olduğumuz konulara kamuoyunun ve kamunun dikkatini çekmektir.

    Telekomünikasyon İletişim Başkanlığı ( http://www.tib.gov.tr )

    Telekomünikasyon Kurumu - Bilgi Teknolojileri ve İletişim Kurumu (http://www.tk.gov.tr - http://www.btk.gov.tr )

    Ulaştırma Bakanlığı (http://www.ubak.gov.tr )

    sitelerine erişim, youtube'a yonelik olarak yürüttükleri 5651 sayılı yasa kapsamındaki hukuksuz çalışmalar sebebi ile engellenmiştir.

    Tübitak (http://www.tubitak.gov.tr)

    sitesine erişim ise kurum içerisinde yer alan, kamu güvenliğini hedef alan BOME(Bilgisayar Olaylarına Müdahale Ekibi) yapısının fonksiyonsuzluğunu ve vizyonsuzluğunu gözler önüne sermek için engellenmiştir. Kamu Bilgi Güvenliği daha kendi güvenliğini sağlayamayan bu tarz kurumların tekeline bırakılmamalıdır.

    Bilgilerinize arz ederiz.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like