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Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
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Defacements are often but not exclusively carried out by lower skilled hackers, who may find a way to change content on a particular part of a site. RootAyyildiz appears to have targeted other sites in the past too."Defaced By RootAyyıldız · Turkish And Muslim Defacer · you and a lot of american politicians from joe, you are all a Zionist dog, you are all unjust anti-human," a cached message on another site hosted on Github reads.On their Facebook profile, RootAyyildiz has a logo that reads "He is a Turkish Defacer."RootAyyildiz told Motherboard in a Facebook message that they defaced the Trump site using Server Side Template Injection (SSTI), which is a technique where an attacker can put their own arbitrary code into a site's template. They said they had control over that part of the site for 3 months.“There are many areas of hacking attacks, for example, hacking social media accounts or websites, I am a hacktivist and I have been working on websites for a long time and I choose this management to have my voice heard,” they added.Donald Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Update: This piece has been updated to include comment from RootAyyildiz.Subscribe to our cybersecurity podcast CYBER, here. Subscribe to our new Twitch channel.Do you know anything else about this hack? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.