Indonesia's national data center has been compromised by a hacking group asking for a $8 million ransom that the government says it won't pay. The cyberattack has disrupted services of more than 200 government agencies at both the national and regional levels since last Thursday, said Samuel Abrijani Pangerapan, the director general of informatics applications with the Communications and Informatics Ministry.
The attackers have held data hostage and offered a key for access in return for the $8 million ransom, said PT Telkom Indonesia’s director of network & IT solutions, Herlan Wijanarko, without giving further details. Wijanarko said the company, in collaboration with authorities at home and abroad, is investigating and trying to break the encryption that made data inaccessible. Communication and Informatics Minister Budi Arie Setiadi told journalists that the government won’t pay the ransom.
The disruption to the national data center and days-long needed to recover the system means this ransomware attack was extraordinary,' Persadha said. 'It shows that our cyber infrastructure and its server systems were not being handled well.' He said a ransomware attack would be meaningless if the government had a good backup that could automatically take over the main server of the national data center during a cyberattack.