Istanbul Senin Data Breach Validation
Mert SARICA
Introduction When the calendar showed May 26, 2025, a post appeared on DarkForums — a platform frequented by cybercriminals — from a threat actor using the alias kovalidis. In the message, the actor, claiming to be (or posing as) a member of the Powerful Greek Army (PGA) hacker group, announced…
Phishing Cloaking Techniques
Introduction Those of you who have read my blog post titled Investment Scammers have seen how scammers try to lure innocent people into their traps through fake ads on social media and networks. Just as in that article, websites play a critical role in fraud attempts and are essential for…
How Are We Getting Phished?
Introduction Over the past 10 years of my 20-year cybersecurity career—primarily within Turkey’s leading banks and IT subsidiaries—I’ve taken on leadership and executive roles, including CISO, thanks to the knowledge, experience, and achievements I’ve gained. While the winds have carried me into executive leadership roles in recent years, I’ve continued…
Chasing The Threat Actor
As seen in my research articles such as Investment Scammers, Deepfake Scammers, Was Turkey’s e-Government Hacked?, and WhatsApp Scammers, Telegram groups have increasingly become a hub for organized cybercrime groups, threat actors, and scammers in recent years. But why? The main reason for this is that Telegram’s anonymity and privacy…
Investment Scammers
Introduction If you remember, in the article I published in June 2024 titled Deepfake Scammers, I mentioned that I would provide the technical details of their operations to be covered in another article. Since then, the information I have obtained through cybersecurity research has reached a point where I struggled…
Information Thieves
Introduction In recent years, when we look at cybersecurity incidents involving prominent entities such as Uber, Airbus, Grand Theft Auto VI, and similar cases, we observe that malicious software, specifically infostealers designed for information theft, has come to the forefront. These types of malware are increasingly playing infostealers a significant…
Deepfake Scammers
Introduction As of May 2024, we continue to witness the revolution and development of generative artificial intelligence with both excitement and concern. OpenAI showcased to the world in a launch event that with their newly announced GPT-4o, ChatGPT can engage in dialogue much more closely resembling human interaction, understanding and…
Troll Hunting
Introduction In recent years, we have seen the increasing importance of cyber threat intelligence for organizations. As a result, the number of products and services used for this purpose within organizations has been growing rapidly. Firstly, cyber threat intelligence provides a significant advantage to organizations by helping them identify threat…
How Do They Hack Turkish e-Government Accounts?
Introduction On October 25, 2023, at 11:46, I learned that my Turkish e-Government Gateway account had been temporarily disabled for one hour due to multiple unsuccessful login attempts with the wrong password through the e-Government application and warnings sent to my email address. Although the likelihood of a threat actor…