A Fool Gets Beaten Even in Internet

Security Situation In Turkey

My home country; Turkey, is one of the developing countries in the world.

Turkey is still in the process of migrating to e-ID cards which follow the EU standard, and once the migration is over, lots of other online services will be available to all, just like here in Estonia. Right now, there is an online service called e-Government, which lets you do a query for almost anything; from lawsuits, to your educational past. All users are notified about cyber attacks, scenarios etc. via email once they register for the system with their e-ID. The whole system is said to be secure, with firewall, HTTPS, etc., however the accuracy of that statement is questionable.

All Turkish men are required to serve in the military for 6 months. Unless they are studying at an university. Unless they have some physical, medical, psychological handicap, other citizenship, or they are currently studying; they are required to serve in the military once they are 19 years old. Now that I've given you some background info, let me tell you one experience of mine from just a couple months ago.

It was the end of the first semester, and I had 1 month of free time as I submitted all my finals early. I didn't have a reason to stay here in Tallinn, so I went back to Turkey. While in Turkey, I decided to check my e-Government account for anything that needed my attention. I saw that I was wanted (not exactly, but I don't know the correct term) because I was a military getaway. I knew this would happen as you can't register your university on e-Government if the university is abroad, and because of that, it seems like you are not studying on the whole Turkish citizenship system. So, I went to the closest military office to postpone my military service date. After a security checkup at the door, everything was so lax. There is almost no security inside. You can even use the computer of an employee there, if you ask nicely (I know you can because I did it, and they didn't even log out). If you can use a computer there, that means you can transfer a virus from an USB drive, or you can even change stuff on the e-Government system using the employee's account.

So, is Turkey safe from cyber attacks? Both yes and no. It is safe to say that Turkey is safe from regular attacks from remote places, but Turkey is not safe from internal cyber attacks because the people working in some government offices are not aware of different cyber attacks, they only know phishing sort of attacks.