Syrian hacker group says it hacked Turkey two years ago

A Syrian hacker group suspected to be linked with the al-Assad regime says it broke into e-mails of Turkish goverment agencies two years ago in retaliation for Turkey's downing of a Syrian helicopter Hackers from the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) have said they hacked scores of email accounts, including ones belonging to the Turkish government, but waited for the right time to reveal them.

SEA recently published confidential emails and messages from strategic Turkish government agencies. The hackers released a total of 967 email accounts in 14 categories on the Internet, unveiling scores of correspondence made between March 2009 and November 2012.

The list of emails hacked by the group includes a number of Turkish ministers, diplomats and civil servants, as well as accounts from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Arab League.

"We hacked  the Turkish email servers two years ago but chose to hold on to these emails to ensure the Turkish government doesn't attempt to whitewash the involvement they have had inside Syria immediately," a spokesperson from SEA told daily Hürriyet in a recent email interview.

The hacker group identified itself as "thousands of Syrian youth who stood up to an external plot to destroy our country, Syria, from the very start of the war."

The spokesperson of the group claimed that the emails they exposed had proved the coordination between the Turkish government and armed groups in Syria.

"The entire world did not respect Syria's borders and we will, in turn, ignore all the borders of the world and target those who want to bring harm to our country no matter where they reside," the member said.

'No connection to al-Assad'

The group, which has been said to support...