The hacking that occurred at the Temporary National Data Center is still a hot issue in Indonesia. The Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Kominfo) refused to pay PDNS 2 hackers who demanded a ransom of USD 8 million (IDR 131 billion).
The ransom money was related to Indonesian people’s data which was encrypted by hackers. Besides paying the PDNS system hackers, Kominfo is also undertaking other initiatives.
“If we want to open (data encryption), we have to pay a ransom. Deputy Minister of Communication and Information, Nezar Patria, said that they will not pay ransom but will take steps to protect the existing data at the Borobudur Hotel, Central Jakarta, on Wednesday (26/6/2024).
Several agency data survived the data center hacker attack
The National Cyber and Security Agency (BSSN), Telkomsigma, Kominfo, and Cybercrime are working together to protect data from the Data Center hacker attack. 282 ministries, institutions, and regions use PDNS 2 for their data services, and around 44 of these agencies have data reserves.
“As stated by the Head of BSSN yesterday, there are 282 ministries, institutions and regions whose data services are in PDNS 2, so there are two data center: Serpong and Surabaya. “We have identified around 44 that have data backups,” said Nezar.
The remaining 238 agencies are still under monitoring and it is hoped that most will not have too much impact. The PDNS 2 hacker attack has taken quite a long time, since it occurred on Thursday 20 June 2024. The Deputy Minister of Communication and Information explained that resolving this problem does take time.
“The name ransomware is a dialogue as I said earlier, there is a process for migration. For migration, we must ensure that the new landing place is also clean. Well, this is not a joke because later if all the data is moved and the new house also turns out to have infected files, then we will repeat it again,” he explained.
So, the resolution of the PDNS 2 hacker attack needs to be done carefully and the priority in this case is that public services can run again. Like immigration which can now operate again.
National Data Center Project Will Continue
Nezar also said that the PDN project would continue. The PDN that was built has a cyber security architecture that is included in the data center governance.
“The PDN that we will build, the cyber security architecture is already included in the data center governance. “So we hope this will be a lesson, a lesson learned, indeed this is temporary but we will learn many lessons there,” added Nezar.
As a reminder, PDNS 2 hackers attacked with Brain Cipher ransomware which is a derivative of Lockbit 3.0. This ransomware once attacked the Indonesian Sharia Bank.
The Indonesian version of this article can be read in Gizmologi.ID
