Identification Of Government Domains Infiltrated By Gambling And Pornographic Sites, Kominfo Pokes Website Managers

Illustration of a porn site (Unsplash-Charles Deluvio)

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Communication and Informatics (Kominfo) together with the Indonesian Internet Domain Name Manager (PANDI) have identified cases of using compromised government domains for gambling and pornography sites.

"Kominfo and PANDI have identified cases of using government domains for gambling and pornography and have issued a warning to the domain managers concerned," said Director General of Public Communication Information Kominfo Usman Kansong, Wednesday, January 25, confiscated by Antara.

Usman explained, the management of domain or website content that has been published in accordance with applicable regulations is entirely the responsibility of the domain manager of the agency concerned.

Compromised domains are generally sub domains that are no longer effectively managed by the agency but are not deleted.

He said infiltration could occur due to a number of things, including not deleting domains or sub-domains that were no longer used by agencies, the use of content management systems or CMS whose security management was not properly managed, and limited human resource capabilities.

Regarding the use of compromised government domains for gambling and pornography sites, Usman said that his party had taken a number of steps to deal with them.

"Kominfo has issued a warning and suspended domains that do not heed warnings in accordance with applicable regulations," he said.

Kominfo, said Usman, is also working with the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN) to provide information security outreach to domain managers or government websites.

In addition, Kominfo also conducts cyber patrols against misuse of government domains or websites for purposes outside of the proper provisions.

Previously, in the last few months, websites were found, both from the Regional Government, schools and universities containing online gambling content.

BSSN even revealed that similar cases had been found since December 2022.

In the BSSN findings, it was found that there were 291 websites belonging to the public PSE which were exposed to online gambling content with details of 30 websites belonging to the Government, 38 websites belonging to schools, and 68 websites belonging to universities.