Greece Reportedly Hired 80 Hackers to Fight a Cyberwar With Turkey

• The Greeks have employed IT experts to help fight Turkish hacking teams and launch effective attacks.
• The two countries have been engaging in intense cyberwar for many months now, and the situation is still escalating.
• Many of the associated social media posts and news pieces that come from either side are entirely made up.

The cyberwar between Turkey and Greece is reportedly escalating, with the Greek side hiring 80 new hackers to help cope with recent cyber-attack waves that originate from the other side of the sea. As reported by local media, the last time the Greek Intelligence Service hired IT experts for this purpose was in 2009, so there was an urgent need for “fresh blood.” As the news detail, the 80 hackers were carefully selected among a pool of “geniuses,” while they all have multi-paged CVs in the IT sector.

In January, we reported about Turkish hackers (“Anka Neferler Tim”) DDoSing Greek government and ministry websites. The Greeks responded through the national Anonymous group, which launched attacks against the Turkish “112” emergency services, as well as various newspapers and also the Police. This lasted for the following months, with one side launching attacks towards the critical services and infrastructure of the other, so the cyberwar continued, following an escalation trajectory. The latest events involve the defacement of a municipality website in the Thessaloniki area, to which the Greeks responded by attacking Turkish medical record servers and deleting data.

In this whole situation, there have been multiple false claims from either side. In many cases, the Greek and Turkish hacking teams reported database attacks and website defacements that never happened. Each side is posting stuff on social media because the hacks have extensions in the national spirit of their respective followership. The two countries have had fierce rancor for centuries. Today, this animosity thrives and blossoms in the cyberspace, as anyone can claim anything they want and create an image of superiority over the other side.

#FakeNews

— 𝐃𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐬 𝐊𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐤𝐨𝐬 🌐 (@Koutsoukosdim) June 11, 2020

According to a digital news report from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Turkey tops the list with the “completely made-up news” on online sources. And as for who comes second, you’ve guessed it - it’s Greece. That said, whatever comes from news sources out of these countries must be taken with a grain of salt.

Understandably, the ever-shifting and evolving geopolitical theater in the Mediterranean is constantly fueling tensions between Turkey and Greece. However, it would be nice to see the two countries focus more on their internal problems - which they have plenty of - rather than spending resources and devoting the workhours of IT experts in the defacement of websites and the disruption of critical infrastructure and services of the enemy.