Journalist İbrahim Haskoloğlu, who claimed that a group had hacked Turkey’s e-government website and other government-related sites, has been detained, according to Turkish media reports.
Police raided his house in the Üsküdar district of İstanbul in the early hours of Tuesday and took him into custody.
Haskoloğlu last week revealed in a series of tweets that a hacker group made contact with him two months ago, saying they had stolen data from the e-government website and other government-related sites, including those of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Undersecretary Hakan Fidan.
“They shared the data of some government officials with me,” Haskoloğlu said, posting photos of President Erdoğan and Fidan’s identity cards with critical information on them censored in the photos.
Following his revelations, the General Directorate of Civil Registration and Nationality, operating under the Interior Ministry, denied the claims in a written statement released on Wednesday.
The journalist also posted photos of his own identity card, explaining that the hackers also sent him photos of his ID and the IDs of some of his acquaintances after he had asked them to do it in order to verify the accuracy of the data they had obtained.
Haskoloğlu added that the group not only had access to his ID but also to his university diploma, addresses, phone numbers and information related to his social security and monthly salary.
According to Haskoloğlu, the hackers also infiltrated the e-Pulse website, an online personal health record system of the Turkish Health Ministry, and is able to tamper with data on the system, which includes changing Turkish citizens’ COVID-19 test results from negative to positive and vice versa.
