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Elections commission faces cyberattacks
Ahead of the simultaneous legislative and presidential elections in April, the General Elections Commission (KPU) has been facing a tough challenge fighting off hackers who have attacked the commission’s website and tried to control the devices handling all programs related to the elections
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span>Ahead of the simultaneous legislative and presidential elections in April, the General Elections Commission (KPU) has been facing a tough challenge fighting off hackers who have attacked the commission’s website and tried to control the devices handling all programs related to the elections.
KPU chairman Arief Budiman said on Wednesday during a hearing with the House of Representatives that unidentified individuals had tried to infiltrate the KPU’s system. An early finding from IP address detections indicated the individual hackers were operating both in Indonesia and other countries.
Recently, Bloomberg reported that the KPU faced cyber incursions by hackers with IP addresses in China and Russia, believed to be attempts to discredit the polling process.
The KPU confirmed it had faced a number of hackers with IP addresses from several countries, including China and Russia.
“Just because they operate from certain countries, however, that doesn’t mean they’re foreigners. Local people can also engage in hacking from abroad,” Arief said.
“So, we shouldn’t specifically blame certain countries before we find the hackers and find out their motives,” he added.
He said the KPU faced such attacks almost everyday but he added that everything was under control.
Arief went on to say that the hackers hacked several programs and devices, but only on the front end of the website, meaning no significant data was affected.
“They even once hacked the WhatsApp group of KPU employees,” he said, referring to messaging service application WhatsApp.
The KPU, however, said the public should not worry about more serious attacks. The commission, which holds the data of about 192.8 million voters, guaranteed that the hackers would not be able to compromise important data.
Besides the voter list, the commission also stores the data of the election results nationwide.
Arief said the office had a team to fend off the attacks. In addition, he said, the voting results would be counted and recapped manually, so any cyber problem would pose no significant threat, Arief said.
House of Representative lawmaker Ahmad Riza Patria of the Gerindra Party said that it was not surprising that many people would want to disrupt the elections on April 17.
The KPU, therefore, should be wary of the possibility that the hackers would be more aggressive in this election, he said.
Prabowo-Sandiaga campaign team spokesman Viva Yoga Maulana demanded the KPU not rely on its IT system for the election result count, saying that the system could no longer be trusted. “Therefore, it is better for the KPU to refer to the manual system, not to its IT, when it comes to vote counting. Computer-based counting is prone to manipulation. The IT system should only help [the process], not be the main method,” Viva said.
Incumbent President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo will once again face his arch rival Prabowo Subianto, who lost to Jokowi in 2014. Jokowi garnered 70.99 million votes, 53.15 percent in 2014, while Prabowo got 62.57 million, 46.85 percent. The small margin between the two, only 6.3 percent, means that it is important for Indonesia to ensure the vote count is reliable and solid.
KPU commissioner Viryan Aziz said not all of the hackers had malicious intentions. “In my observation there are various hacker categories: Those who are curious [about whether they can hack the website], and then those who are not happy [with us],” he said, adding that the KPU had always cooperated with the National Police every time they received an attack.
The House also warned the KPU to strengthen its computer system to avoid any error in the server, particularly on polling day, which is slated for April 17.
Earlier, the KPU also found that about 370 foreigners were registered as voters in their list in several provinces.
On Wednesday evening, the commission removed the 370 foreigners from the list. The KPU said the foreigners were mistakenly recorded in the list because some had permanent resident status that allowed them to have an ID card, which physically resembles that of an Indonesian citizen.
Besides facing cyber attacks and problems with the voter list, the KPU is also fighting against fake news and hoaxes aimed at discrediting the commission.
The KPU, in cooperation with the Elections Supervisory Agency and the Communications and Information Ministry, has formed an antihoax task force designed to prevent fake news discrediting the institution.
