Turkmenistan: Independent Émigré Site Hacked, Subscribers Exposed
The independent émigré news site Chronicles of Turkmenistan at chrono-tm.org has been hacked, the editor, Farid Tuhbatullin has reported today.
The site began showing an error message "500 Internal Server Error" message early this morning and remains disabled.
The Central Asian blogging cite neweurasia.org also reported that editors received a message from the hackers:
Dear press,
I have 2 news for you, one good, one bad.
First bad:
You will no longer be able to access the chrono-tm.org website! OMG NOoo!! :-((Good news is, we are releasing their database, including list of subscribers, email addresses of comment authors, unpublished comments, etc etc…
Here is the first part, enjoy!
[website link]Stay tuned, we’ll have more good and bad news for you!!
The link leads to an apparent list of emails of subscribers to the chrono-tm.org news feed and those who comment on the website, many of whom are activists in the region or inside Turkmenistan who wished to remain anonymous.
Chronicles of Turkmenistan has been a leading source of information about the explosion in Abadan, which authorities in Turkmenistan have continued to minimize, and has published estimates of the casualties.
Subscribers of the site are advised to change their passwords and make sure the new ones are strong, with both upper and lower case letters and numbers.
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