Haikal is the online handle of a 19-year-old (also identified by authorities using his real initials, SH). who is the most infamous hacker in Indonesia at the moment. Haikal admitted to leading a group of friends on a digital heist of popular Indonesian airline ticketing website Tiket.com, from which they will able to pinch about Rp 1.4 billion (~$300,000) worth of tickets which they then resold online.
Haikal used his portion of the ill-gotten gains to buy a Ducati motorcycle, but police eventually tracked down the teen hacker and his associates and now he could be facing serious jail time for his crimes.
But, on the bright side, it looks like he’s going to come out of it with a job offer – from the police.
“Yes, we’re going to let him go straight and become a benefit to the country,” explained Adj. Comr. Idam Wasiadi of the National Police’s cyber crime subdivision, as quoted by Detik today.
Idam said that Haikal was just one of the young hackers that police planned to recruit to help Indonesia in its battles against cybercrimes. Although he said Haikal’s comrades in the Tiket.com would not be getting similar offers (they must not be 1337 enough).
Haikal headed up the “Gangtengers Crew” (a play on the Indonesian word “ganteng” meaning “handsome”) which was made-up of a motley assortment of characters including two recent high school grads and a college dropout. As for Haikal, he apparently only finished middle school and taught himself all of his network infiltration skills from the Internet.
Police say Haikal’s crew hacked into some 4,600 websites, some for profit, many just to practice or show off. These sites included those of local ride-hailing giant Go-Jek and the website of the National Police.
The crew was able to steal the huge number of tickets in October by breaking into airline company Citilink’s database of pre-purchased tickets for travel agents. They then resold the Tiket.com booking codes through Facebook for pure profit.
It wasn’t until November that Global Network, the parent company of Tiket.com, noticed that something was up and reported the case to the police, who were quickly able to track down the hackers.
The police said Haikal and his crew could face up to 12 years in prison under Indonesia’s Law on Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE).
But it seems likely that Haikal’s recruitment offer will be sweetened with the promise of a reduced sentence, an offer he’d be hard pressed to turn down.
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