This doesn't make any sense unless someone in Erdogan's Government is paying for the prizes.
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A
hacker in Turkey has been trying to encourage distributed
denial-of-attacks by making it into a game, featuring points and prizes
for attempting to shut down political websites. The DDoS platform,
translated as Surface …
A Turkish hacker is giving out prizes for DDoS attacks
But the DDoS software comes with a hidden backdoor
The DDoS platform, translated as Surface Defense in English, has been prompting other hackers in Turkey to sign up and score points, according to security firm Forcepoint which uncovered it.
Users that participate will be given a tool known as Balyoz, the Turkish word for Sledgehammer, that can be used to launch DDoS attacks against a select number of websites.
For every ten minutes they attack a website, the users will be awarded a point, which can then be used to obtain rewards. These prizes include a more powerful DDoS attacking tool, access to bots designed to generate revenue from click fraud, and a prank program that can infect a computer and scare the victim with sounds and images.
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“Users can also suggest new websites to add to the list of targets,” Forcepoint said. “There is a live scoreboard for participants to see how they compare to other participants.”
Forcepoint However, it’s not exactly an efficient way to launch a DDoS attack, which are typically done with armies of infected computers that can number in thousands or more.
It’s unclear how many participants the DDoS platform managed to recruit or if it managed to take down any websites. But Forcepoint noticed that the DDoS attack tool given to the participants also contains a backdoor that will secretly install a Trojan on the computer.
The backdoor will only execute on a participant’s machine if they’ve been banned from the competition. Its goal is probably to enslave the computer and form a botnet to launch additional DDoS attacks, Forcepoint said.
The hacker behind the DDoS platform is believed to go by the handle “Mehmet” and is possibly based in the Turkish city of Eskisehir, according to evidence found in Forcepoint’s investigation.
Although the DDoS attacks are geared at political websites, the participants involved the competition might not be ideologically motivated, and instead could just want access to the hacking tools, Forcepoint said.
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