Immigration: Visa Services To Online Passports Have Recovered 100 Percent

Director General of Immigration of the Ministry of Law and Human Rights Silmy Karim (ANTARA/Narda Margaretha Sinambela)

JAKARTA - Director General (Dirjen) of Immigration of the Ministry of Law and Human Rights (Kemenkumham) Silmy Karim revealed that his party succeeded in restoring visaonline or online services, residence permits and 100 percent passport.

The reason is, immigration services have been paralyzed due to disturbances at the National Data Center (PDN) since Thursday (20/6).

"Today we have confirmed that all immigration services from crossings, then visaonlines, residence permits, and passports have recovered 100 percent," said Silmy as quoted by ANTARA, Friday, June 28.

He explained that the passport service was the last to be restored because the number of these services most mostly carried out by immigration.

In addition, Silmy also told how the chronology of the ransomware attack on PDN also had an impact on immigration.

"Thursday at approximately half past five or to be precise at 4.20, there was a system disturbance. Initially, from our side, we checked whether it was the network, whether it was an interruption caused by technical matters," he explained.

"That used to be in the field, reporting to the IT Directorate, this was an obstacle. Because we do have a 24-hour desk, to support the system," he continued.

Silmy said immigration is a government institution or institution that relies heavily on technology.

Therefore, ransomware attacks greatly impact immigration services.

This makes the immigration service system that has not yet recovered expand to services at the airport.

"Then I was reported again around half past six in the morning (Thursday). This is at the airport the system is off. Usually, 30 minutes is done quickly. Internally, right? What? Oh, PDN. From there there there is no information regarding cyber attack," said Silmy.

"Then in the morning I checked, usually I checked not to mention three hours. Then at the sixth hour of the disturbance, it was not correct either," he added.

At that time, Silmy still believed that the technical disruption of immigration services could not have taken more than 6 hours.

His party also waited for the next six hours in the hope that PDN would recover.

"We will add another 6 hours, 12 hours. There is no confirmation. So I immediately contacted the Minister of Law and Human Rights as our superior. Please allow us to prepare centralative data," said Silmy.

"Because if I let it, the decision is not made quickly, then the service will be disrupted. Immediately we prepare it takes approximately 24 hours to prepare new data centers for our system to be installed," he said.

One day is needed to make arrangements or settings on the centralative data. The immigration system gradually recovered on Saturday (22/6).

"That's why the crossing only recovered on Saturday night. So from Thursday afternoon to Saturday night," he concluded.

A number of public services on Thursday (20/6) had experienced problems due to disturbances in PDNS 2. One of the services that was heavily affected was the Autogate system belonging to the Directorate General of Immigration which disrupted people's mobility.

After being traced, it was found that PDNS 2 experienced a cyberattack in the form of ransomware called Brain Cipher, a new variant of the Lockbit 3.0 ransomware.

As of Tuesday (25/6), 282 agencies were identified as affected by the PDNS 2 incident. The government immediately focused on recovering various public services that were affected and at the same time conducting digital forensic investigations.