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Join Telegram Channel- Indonesia's national data center suffered a cyberattack from a group of hackers demanding an $8 million ransom.
- More than 200 government agencies at the national and regional levels have been affected since the attack began last Thursday.
- Some services, such as immigration, have been restored, but efforts are underway to restore others, such as investment licenses.
Indonesia's national data center has been compromised by a group of hackers who demanded an $8 million ransom that the government said it would not pay.
The cyberattack has disrupted the services of more than 200 government agencies at the national and regional levels since last Thursday, said Samuel Abrijani Pangerapan, director general of IT applications at the Ministry of Communications and Informatics.
Some government services have been restored – immigration services at airports and elsewhere are now functional – but efforts continue to restore other services such as investment licenses, Pangerapan told reporters on Monday.
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The attackers took data hostage and offered an access key in exchange for an $8 million ransom, said Herlan Wijanarko, director of network and IT solutions at PT Telkom Indonesia, without giving further details.
Officers check the passports of passengers departing for Singapore at the immigration checkpoint of the Bandar Bentan Telani ferry terminal on Bintan island, Indonesia, May 15, 2024. Indonesia's national data center has been compromised by a hacking group demanding an $8 million ransom that the government says it will not pay. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara, file)
Wijanarko said the company, together with domestic and foreign authorities, was investigating and trying to break the encryption that made the data inaccessible.
Minister of Communication and Information Technology Budi Arie Setiadi told reporters that the government would not pay the ransom.
“We have done our best to carry out the recovery while (the National Cyberspace and Cryptography Agency) is currently carrying out forensic analyses,” Setiadi added.
The head of this agency, Hinsa Siburian, said it had detected samples of the Lockbit 3.0 ransomware.
Pratama Persadha, president of the Indonesian Cybersecurity Research Institute, said the current cyberattack was the most serious in a series of ransomware attacks that have hit Indonesian government agencies and businesses since 2017.
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“The disruption to the national data center and the days it took to recover the system meant this ransomware attack was extraordinary,” Persadha said. “This shows that our cyber infrastructure and its server systems were not well managed.”
He said a ransomware attack would make no sense if the government had a good backup that could automatically take control of the national data center's main server during a cyberattack.
Indonesia's central bank was attacked by ransomware in 2022 but public services were not affected. The Ministry of Health's COVID-19 app was hacked in 2021, revealing the personal data and health status of 1.3 million people.
Last year, Dark Tracer, an intelligence platform that monitors malicious activity in cyberspace, revealed that a group of hackers known as LockBit ransomware claimed to have stolen 1.5 terabytes of data managed by the largest Islamic bank in Indonesia, Bank Syariah Indonesia.