The amendment of the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) Law was passed into law on Tuesday despite intensifying public protests against what many believe is a systematic effort to defang the antigraft body.

Amid the efforts to protest the KPK Law amendment, which have been conducted both offline and online, prior to the House of Representatives’ approval, a number people complained that their WhatsApp accounts were compromised as they had sent messages they said did not sound like them at all.

A student at Padjajaran University in Bandung, West Java, M. Luthfi Indrawan, said his WhatsApp account suddenly sent messages containing threats against National Police chief Gen. Tito Karnavian.

Luthfi said he was made aware of it when his friends started questioning him about the messages sent from his WhatsApp number to various groups at 2 a.m. on Monday.

“Whoever receives a WhatsApp [message] from me, it’s not from me as it’s been hacked. Until now, I can’t log into my WhatsApp account,” Luthfi confirmed through his Instagram account on Monday.

The hacker had sent messages alluding that attempts to weaken the KPK were part of a scenario plotted by Tito and calling on Luthfi’s friends to carry out amaliyah at Tito’s official residence in Jakarta. 

Amaliyah is a term often used by extremist groups to refer to an attack or suicide bombing.

The messages ended with calls to “jihad for the KPK”.

“There were messages that didn’t sound like me at all and were negatively provocative. They weren’t only sent to one group, as according to my friends, similar messages were also sent to other groups I am in,” Luthfi added, showing screenshots of said WhatsApp messages.

Luthfi’s friend, Hibatullah Shaldan Arief, said Luthfi had not sent the messages, as he was not able to log into his account after the verification code required in the process had been used by another person.

“There could possibly be groups or certain actors who are trying to distort our aspirations,” Shaldan said.

Luthfi’s phone number, which was allegedly hacked, was listed as a contact person on a press release published on Sunday by the Padjajaran University Students Consolidation to declare their vote of no-confidence in the commitment of the Joko “Jokowi” Widodo-Jusuf Kalla administration and members of the House for the 2014 to 2019 term to eradicating corruption.

The organization said the KPK had succeeded in earning the public’s trust in eradicating corruption, amid the fading credibility of the National Police and the Attorney General’s Office (AGO), but that this success had disturbed “several parties”, who were attempting to weaken the antigraft body.

Previously, Gadjah Mada University (UGM) lecturer Rimawan Pradiptyo also said he suspected his phone number had been hacked after he created the National Academics Alliance WhatsApp group, which gathered the support of some 2,100 academics nationwide to fight against the KPK Law revision.

He said he had received reports from fellow academics in the group saying that his hacked phone number had shared a link to a website supporting the KPK Law revision on Sept. 10, at a time when he could no longer access the group.

He added that several members of the group had also received terrorizing calls from unidentified phone numbers.

One of these members was Wijayanto, better known as Wija, a lecturer at Diponegoro University’s School of Political Science and Government, who said he had received dozens of terrorizing calls from unidentified phone numbers from various foreign countries on Sept. 11.

He was originally a member of the National Academics Alliance WhatsApp group that Rimawan created, but left as soon as he learned that the latter’s phone number had been hacked on Sept. 10.

The following day, Wija joined another WhatsApp group made to replace the National Academics Alliance group. However, not long after joining, he started receiving dozens of calls from unidentified phone numbers from various foreign countries. When he accepted one of the calls, there was no sound from the other end, he said.

He soon left the second group after almost all academics in the group had reported the same complaints, fearing that members of the group could become the next hacking victims.

Wija’s concerns were not without reason, as a student of his reported on Monday that he had been receiving terrorizing calls. The student had been in a group created for one of the classes that Wija was teaching. 

The student, Wija said, had received a notification that someone had tried to log into his WhatsApp account using another device.

“My student supported the campaign against the KPK Law revision, but he was never one to make statements and announce his name publicly [...] I’m afraid that my phone’s been hacked and the hacker has access to my contacts, including those of my students,” Wija told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

SAFEnet executive director Damar Juniarto said that to take over someone’s WhatsApp account, a perpetrator only needed the owner’s phone number and email address.

“WhatsApp is encrypted, so without access to the device, it’s actually difficult to hack. However, owners who are less careful with their devices, such as letting their friends borrow their phones often, using other devices to access their WhatsApp [...] accepting sudden requests or clicking fake links made to install spyware into the phone could possibly lead to the take over,” he said.

Damar said that further investigation was needed to identify the motive behind the hacking and messages, and whether they were related to the victims’ opposition to the KPK Law revision.

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