Donald Trump's website hacked by Turkish 'hacktivist,' posts President Erdogan's video

On Monday, former US President Donald Trump's website got hacked and momentarily vandalised. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's YouTube video was featured on one of the site's pages. The message on the defacement, which appeared on the site's "Action" subdomain was, 'do not be like those who forgot Allah, so Allah made them forget themselves,' according to CNN. 

The hack appears to have been carried out by "RootAyyildiz," a self-described hacktivist. The hacker admitted to Vice News of being behind the defacement on Monday, stating that they hacked the page using a Server-Side Template Injection, or SSTI, which is a type of attack that allows for remote code execution. The hacker informed the outlet in a Facebook message that there are numerous areas of hacking attacks, such as accessing social media accounts or websites. According to him, he is a hacktivist and he have been working on websites for a long time.

Trump founded the site, targeted by the hacker, in May

Trump founded the site, targeted by the hacker, in May, just after stepping down as the president. He had been banned from almost all major social media platforms at the time including — Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. As a result, Trump wanted to build his own platform. However, after the site launched and failed to gain the level of attention he hoped for, the former president quietly ended active editorial operations.

Last October, hackers allegedly damaged Trump's campaign website, claiming to have classified information disparaging Trump without providing any evidence. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency stated that website defacement is a relatively low-level approach used by untrained hackers looking for security weaknesses, according to Forbes.

Other pro-Turkey hackers target

This is not the first time pro-Turkey hackers have targeted the United States. In mid-November, a piece of Biden's campaign website was vandalised with reference to Turkey and RootAyyildiz. The US National Intelligence Council appeared to mention that incident, stating Turkish nationalists damaged a presidential candidate's website, according to the American business magazine. However, the federal report didn't say the Turkish government was directly involved in the breach. According to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, pro-Turkey hackers also took control of several American journalists' Twitter accounts in 2018.

(Image: AP)