Indonesia’s national data center has fallen victim to a significant cyberattack, causing widespread disruptions across government offices and the main airport in Jakarta. The attackers, utilizing ransomware from the notorious LockBit group, have demanded an $8 million ransom.
Last week, a sophisticated cyberattack on Indonesia’s national data center severely impacted hundreds of government institutions and led to substantial delays at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. Long queues formed at immigration gates due to the system outages caused by the ransomware attack, according to a senior communications ministry official.
Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan, a high-ranking official, reported that 210 institutions at both national and local levels were affected. He confirmed that a dark web hacker had demanded an $8 million ransom to unlock the encrypted data.
The immigration services began returning to normal operations on Monday morning, with efforts ongoing to restore other disrupted services. Authorities are rigorously investigating the ransomware, dubbed Brain Cipher, which has rendered government data inaccessible through sophisticated encryption techniques.
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LockBit, a Russian-based ransomware group, has been notorious for targeting governments, major corporations, educational institutions, and healthcare facilities. Their ransomware, once deployed, encrypts files and data, effectively freezing the victim’s systems until a ransom is paid.
Last month, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia imposed sanctions on the leader of LockBit, accusing the group of extorting billions from numerous victims worldwide. According to Europol, LockBit was responsible for a quarter of all ransomware attacks globally last year, extracting over $1 billion from thousands of victims. The most affected countries include the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and China.
Indonesia has a history of cybersecurity vulnerabilities, with issues ranging from low online literacy to frequent data breaches. During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, researchers from vpnMentor revealed that the personal data of 1.3 million users of a government test-and-trace app had been compromised. This breach followed another incident where the data of over 200 million participants of the National Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan) was allegedly leaked.
