Samuel Abrijani Pangerapan, head of information technology (IT) applications at the Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Informatics, said the cyberattack has disrupted services of more than 200 government agencies at both the national and regional levels since June 20.

Speaking to reporters earlier this week, Mr. Pangerapan said some government services, such as immigration at the airport, have resumed. Other services, such as investment licensing, are still in the process of being restored.

The attackers held the data hostage and would provide access keys in exchange for a ransom of $8 million, PT Telkom Indonesia's head of IT and network solutions Herlan Wijanarko said, without providing further details.

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Airport immigration services were among those affected by the attack on Indonesia's national data centre last week. Photo: iStock

According to Herlan Wijanarko, Director of Network and IT Solutions at PT Telkom Indonesia, the attackers held the data hostage and demanded $8 million in ransom for the decryption key. PT Telkom Indonesia is working with local and international authorities to investigate and attempt to unlock the data.

Communications and Information Technology Minister Budi Arie Setiadi confirmed that the government would not pay the ransom. "We have tried our best to restore the system while the national cyber agency conducts an investigation," Setiadi added.

The head of the National Cyber ​​Agency, Hinsa Siburian, said that samples of the Lockbit 3.0 ransomware had been detected. Meanwhile, Pratama Persadha, chairman of the Indonesian Cyber ​​Security Research Institute, said this was the most serious incident in a series of ransomware attacks targeting Indonesian government agencies and companies since 2017.

According to Mr. Persadha, the national data center was disrupted and it took days to restore the system, indicating that the network infrastructure and server system were not handled well. He pointed out that the ransomware attack would have been meaningless if the government had a good backup.

In 2022, Bank Indonesia was hit by a ransomware attack that did not affect public services. The Ministry of Health’s Covid-19 app was also hacked in 2021, exposing the personal data and health status of 1.3 million people.

In 2023, Dark Tracer – an intelligence platform that monitors malicious activities in cyberspace – revealed that the LockBit hacker group claimed to have stolen 1.5 TB of data from Indonesia's largest Islamic bank, Bank Syariah Indonesia.

(According to Time)