Cyber Attack on Indonesian National Data Center, Disrupting Immigration Checks

TapTechNews June 25th news, The Indonesian Minister of Communications told Reuters on Monday that a cyber attacker had invaded the Indonesian National Data Center, disrupting immigration checks at the airport, and demanded a ransom of 131 billion Indonesian rupiah (TapTechNews note: approximately 58.11 million yuan).

The Indonesian government said at a news conference on Monday that the data center is operated by the Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Kominfo) and is called the NationalDataCenter or PusatDataNasional (PDN), and was invaded on June 20th.

According to the local Indonesian newspaper Tempo, due to the invasion of the PDN, at least 210 institutions were affected, and some Indonesian services were severely disrupted. Most notably, the digital immigration service was shut down, affecting the speed at which the country processes visas, passports, and residence permits. This led to long queues at the airport, but Indonesia said that this situation has now been controlled and the automatic passport scanner has been relaunched.

It is mentioned in the report that the ransomware that invaded the PDN is apparently a variant of LockBit 3.0, and local reports quoted officials as saying that it is a variant called BrainCipher. Broadcom discovered this particular virus more than a week ago and called it double ransomware that can penetrate and encrypt stolen data.

The Indonesian Minister of Communications told reporters that the attacker demanded a ransom of 131 billion Indonesian rupiah. As of now, the Indonesian authorities have not responded whether they plan to pay the ransom or not.