EuropeNews under attack (update 2)

EuropeNews has been under attack, causing the pages to load slowly or not at all. This is verified to be a botnet attack, coming from Russia. After the relevant IP addresses have been blocked, EuropeNews is now running again.

A Turkish hacker team by name of AyYildiz Team (Crescent and Star Team) has attacked various German sites. More information on Earth Times.

We have found that AyYildiz have paid attention to EuropeNews before and may have directed the attack against EuropeNews. What is known for sure is that the attack was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack coming from obscure addresses in Russia, probably a botnet. Blocking those addresses gave our server breathing room again, and all is normal.

Also, our log indicates a (failed) hacking attemt against us.

The attackers would need a fresh botnet to resume the attack. That is not completely impossible, but we have more experience now and expect any future attacks to be fended off quickly.

The attack seems to be part of a hacker attack wave related to a fire in Ludwigshafen, Germany, in an apartment inhabited by a Turkish family. Claims of arson have been thrown around, nothing proven.

ABC News report.

Guardian report.

Unsurprisingly, the Turkish government is exploiting the event to the max. Zaman report.

The implications are explored in this Spiegel report.

The latest assumption about the cause of the fire is that it may have been caused by tinkering with the electrical installations. From Fact - Fiction blog (German). Thus, possibly the fault of the inhabitants, not an attack.

False accusations of racist hate attacks constitute blood libel.

Revenge through Internet attacks will be published as widely as possible. We will not give in to assorted Turkish bullying.

The Ludwigshafen fire and Turkish reactions

However, the DDoS is the least interesting bit. What is more sinister is the background and the behaviour of the Turkish politicians, who immediately reacted by trying to smear the Germans as a bunch of killer racists and, by implication, the *Turkish* politicians as the true protectors of Turks in Germany.

That included a Turkish minister visiting the place of the fire and lots of official statements recalling the racist arson attack in 1993, implying that now a new wave of racist attacks against Turks is looming. To show their distrust, a Turkish investigation team was sent to control the work of the Germans - very unsual behavior.

All this is based on a tiny grafitti on the entrance door "HASS", which they take to mean it's a hate attack. Given the rampant grafitti situation in Germany, and not least in run-down city part like this, there's absolutely no firm reason to interpret a simple bit of evidence as conclusive proof about racism. This is far-fetched, and it is a severe case of libel, too.

This play by the Turkish politicians also ignores the fact that the firefighters were doing a marvelous job, that the cause of the fire is still unknown after four days of investigation - including Turks specifically looking for arson - and it skips the little detail that the 1993 attack was extensively exploited by Turkish investment groups to discourage Turks in Germany from investing their hard-earned money in Germany. Later these Turkish investement groups went into suspicios bankruptcies, netting AKP-connected businessmen (and probably AKP itself) a whopping 25 billion euro.

Further, the performance of the Turkish politicians posing as the protectors of Turks in Germany is a divisive move eeringly similar to the events in the 60's that eventually led to the division of Cyprus. This is counterproductive to integration but fits well with the "special role" Erdogan assigns the Turkish diaspora in Europe. We are on the edge of insurgencies in many places, latest in Cologne.

Connecting the dot is an interesting art. But one easily ends up with rather unpleasent results, and I'm scratching my head over this: Is it really this dangerous?

In any case, it would be wise for the German politicians to simply reject the Turkish demands. By any measure, the German justice system is much better than the Turkish one, Turkish anti-minority crimes are rampant anyway, and German fire technicians are perfectly capable of determining the cause of fires, and the undue interference of Turkey into German matters are a severe breach of diplomatic etiquette that deserves no reward, only rejection.

Erdogan deserves the humiliation of being rejected by the German politicians. Will they show enough spine to do so?