The official website for the Jakarta Transportation Agency was hacked and defaced this morning with a message that appears to mock the department.
Anyone accessing dishub.jakarta.go.id this morning was met with a mostly blackened out page with a photo of a protester wearing the iconic Guy Fawkes mask placed in the center. Below the photo is the message: “You kids shouldn’t be all flash. Even the slightest insults got you so sensitive.”
Jakarta Transportation Agency Head Andri Yansyah said the agency was aware of the hack and that they were looking into whoever was behind it. The website has returned to normal this afternoon.
“I still don’t understand [why the website was hacked], we are going to track them down,” he said, as quoted by Detik today.
The Jakarta Transportation Agency may have its hands full today as it also has to deal with three major transportation issues in the capital, all of which involve some degree of dissatisfaction with transportation regulations in the city and thus could have something to do with the website hack.
One is the mass protest by drivers of ride-sharing apps who are demanding the cancellation of the central government’s new regulations on what are locally referred to as online taxis. Four thousand police and military personnel were deployed to keep the demonstration secure as the protesters marched from the Transportation Ministry Office to the Presidential Palace in Central Jakarta.
Today also marks the first day that authorities began a one-week socialization of a new motorcycle-exclusive lane on Jalan M.H. Thamrin and Jalan Medan Merdeka Barat, which was introduced after Governor Anies Baswedan’s overturned the previous administration’s motorcycle ban on the city’s main thoroughfare. Starting February 5, motorcycles caught not driving on the lane will be fined IDR500K (USD37).
Angkot minivan drivers in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta also staged a big strike today, blocking off Jalan Jatibaru to show their displeasure of the city administration’s policy of periodically shutting off the road so street vendors can sell their goods on the pavement.
Gov’t websites too vulnerable?
Worryingly, there have been one numerous hackings of government and institutional websites in Indonesia in recent years, calling into question the effectiveness of the country’s cyber security. Last year, the Indonesian Press Council and Attorney General’s Office’s websites were hacked and defaced with messages promoting peace and tolerance, while state-owned telco Telkomsel’s website was hacked by someone who was seemingly unhappy about the service provider’s expensive data plans.
In 2016, the official website for the country’s child protection committee was hacked in an apparent protest against the committee’s support for a video game ban.
The only “hacker” the authorities have managed to apprehend in recent times was a man who accessed a huge LED billboard in South Jakarta (not through IT wizardry but because he rather luckily obtained the username and password to access the billboard’s back end) and played a Japanese porn video for everyone to see.
