Hackers Post Pro-Erdogan Messages in Attack on Twitter Accounts
By MARK SCOTT and MILAN SCHREUERMARCH 15, 2017
Twitter accounts belonging to high-profile news outlets, international brands
and politicians were hacked on Wednesday, briefly showing posts in support of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president who is in a bitter standoff with several European Union countries.
Over the weekend, the Dutch authorities stopped the Turkish foreign minister from landing in the Netherlands, where he was to attend a rally,
and they ordered the Turkish minister for families to be escorted out of the country, citing risks to public order and security.
"No additional accounts are impacted." On Tuesday, a separate attack affected two websites
set up to help voters choose among Dutch political parties in the general election.
The dispute involves several countries, including the Netherlands
and Germany, where Turkish politicians wish to hold rallies and campaign for a referendum on Turkey’s proposed Constitution.
Known as a distributed denial of service, or DDoS, which typically involves flooding computer servers with online
messages until they collapse, the attack took the Kieskompas and Stemwijzer sites offline on Tuesday afternoon.
Mr. Erdogan criticized the governments of Germany and the Netherlands, accusing them of Nazi practices,
after Turkish politicians were prevented from attending events in those countries.