Anonymous, a decentralised hacktivist group that is well known for its cyber attacks against the Church of Scientology, the Westboro Bapticist Church, Mastercard and even ISIS, has an infamous reputation, especially with the use of the Guy Fawkes mask used in the film and comic ‘V for Vendetta’.
Although it is not known exactly when the Greek Anonymous group was established, the Anonymous Greece Facebook page was created on January 3, 2020 and have been at the forefront of the Turkish initiated cyberwar against Greece.
Last week, Turkish hackers without provocation brought down the websites of two small municipalities in Macedonia and the South Aegean. Anonymous Greece were at the forefront of revenge attacks by downing the Turkish Foreign and Defence ministries website, the Turkish government’s Cybersecurity website, and attaining over 150,000 Turkish medical files, promising to make more attacks if Turkish provocations continued.
People know that Greece faces an asymmetric invasion attempt from Turkey by the weaponisation of illegal immigrants, an information war from Turkey via their propaganda media outlets like TRT World, and also a military threat with Turkey’s daily invasion of Greece’s airspace, but little is known about the cyberwar.
Greek City Times interviewed Anonymous Greece to ask about cyber warfare.
“Cyber warfare has been going on for years, we can’t say exactly how long for. Cyberwar is very important in our opinion since nowadays everything is connected to the internet and everything is controlled by it. There are just too many IoT (internet) devices,” Anonymous Greece said.
Earlier this year, Turkish hackers brought down the Greek Interior and Foreign ministries websites, as well as the website of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. This would suggest that Greece on the internet is very vulnerable and unprotected to such attacks, however the hacker group reassured that this is not the case.
“Greece is protected well in our opinion. Yes there were exceptions on some of our government sites but this was pretty easy for Greece to fix. Also nothing is fully protected, everything has vulnerabilities,” they explained, adding that this is proven by the sites they decided to target last week.
“Greece is already taking actions to defend against such attacks from Turkish ‘hackers’ attempts against government sites. You can see its effect considering their last attacks were not against [Federal] government websites,” in reference to the latest Turkish hacks against small municipality websites.
“Greece is already updating all systems that are needed and taking every action needed to be safe from cyberattacks,” Anonymous Greece added.
As mentioned, Anonymous Greece took down the Turkish Foreign and Defence Ministries websites, and the Cyber Security website, but why did they do this?
“Turkish hackers attacked the Halkidona municipality website and we responded by taking down more significant targets to show them Greece’s power and that we will fight back whenever they provoke our country,” they said.
When asked if this is also about reputation, the hacker collective said “we really don’t care about reputation. But for the Turkish reputation, we think it went really bad.”
As part of the revenge attacks for bringing down the website of Halkidona municipality, a small municipality of only 30,000 people in Macedonia, Anonymous Greece acquired over 150,000 Turkish medical records.
They explained that they “acquired these records to show them our power. This can create chaos if there are no backups of these records and if they are to be deleted.”
As shown from Anonymous Greece’s Facebook and as already reported by Greek City Times, the hacker collective already began the process of deleting Turkish medical records in response to Turkish hackers bringing down the website of the South Aegean municipality.
In conclusion, Anonymous Greece told Greek City Times that they have no message to the Turkish government or Turkish hackers but in future they may “give it to them when it is time with actions and not words” and that they have no issues with hackers from other countries as they “get along with everyone else.”
