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Fresh data breach puts pressure on government to form cyber privacy agency
As the clock ticks ever closer to the October deadline for establishing a cyber privacy agency, a new hacking incident on a civil service database has allegedly posted millions of stolen data for sale on the dark web.
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Stock illustration of cybercrime (Unsplash/Towfiqu Barbhuiya)
P
ressure is again mounting on the government to establish a new agency overseeing cyber privacy, just two months before the Personal Data Protection (PDP) Law goes into full effect, following fresh reports alleging that data stolen from a civil service database are being sold on the dark web.
A hacker going by the pseudonym TopiAx claimed over the weekend that they had stolen the data of 4.7 million civil servants from the National Civil Service Agency (BKN) database and uploaded them to sell on the hacking site BreachForums. TopiAx said the stolen data included the civil servants’ full names, employment records, email addresses and national identification numbers.
The BKN did not immediately confirm the breach, but instructed every civil servant using any of the agency’s digital platforms to change their passwords as a stopgap measure. The agency added that periodically changing passwords was required to avoid compromising its systems.
“We are currently working with the National Cyber and Encryption Agency [BSSN] and the Communications and Information Ministry to investigate the alleged data breach and assess steps to mitigate [potential] risks,” BKN spokesperson Vino Dita Tama said in a statement on Monday.
“Nevertheless, the BKN can assure that the alleged [hacking] incident does not affect our civil service management system,” Vino added.
The alleged data breach was first reported on Sunday by the Communication & Information System Security Research Center (CISSReC). The cybersecurity watchdog immediately tried to verify the stolen data published on the dark web by sampling a dataset linked to civil servants in Aceh, and found indications of their authenticity.
The latest hacking incident comes less than two months after a major ransomware attack in late June on one of two temporary national data centers (PDN) in Surabaya, East Java.
