Adrian Johnson
TLDR:
- A cyberattack by the Lockbit hacking group compromised the national data centre in Indonesia, causing disruptions to hundreds of government agencies.
- The attackers demanded an £6.3 million ransom, which the Indonesian government refused to pay.
Cyberattack compromises national data centre in Indonesia – Hundreds of Government agencies in Indonesia have been disrupted after hacking group, Lockbit, used an advanced piece of malicious software called Lockbit 3.0 to breach cyber defences. Immigration checkpoints stopped working and manual checks had to be undertaken, leading to long queues at airports across the nation. The head of the Immigration service moved its data centre other than a private cloud server after the system went down.
The Head of the National Cyber and Crypto Agency, Hinsa Siburian, held a press conference on 24 June to discuss the attack and its repercussions. Soon after the attack, cyber criminals demanded an £6.3 million ($8 million) ransom in return for the stolen data. The Indonesia Government refuse to pay the ransom, with efforts now being made to break the locked data. Some leading cybersecurity experts in Indonesia have called for more comprehensive cybersecurity systems to be put in place to ensure this form of attack does not happen again.
Who is LockBit? – LockBit operates on a ransomware-as-a-service business model. It sells its malicious software to affiliates, enabling them to execute cyberattacks. In February, LockBit was disrupted by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Europol. Operation Cronos resulted in the NCA seizing control of LockBit’s main administration platform, ‘compromising their entire criminal enterprise’. Later that month, LockBit said it had restored its servers and was back online.
Protecting Critical Infrastructure – Cybersecurity experts emphasize the importance of protecting critical infrastructure from cyberattacks. Human error is cited as a significant weakness, with recommendations for adopting a zero-trust architecture and privileged access management software. By integrating a zero-trust framework within their network infrastructure, government leaders can better identify and react to cyber attacks and minimize potential damage.
