Hacking The BSSN Site Is An Irony

Photo by Arget on Unsplash

JAKARTA - The official website of the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN) became a victim of hacking by defacement on Wednesday, October 20. Hackers managed to take over the site of the BSSN National Malware Center which is located at pusmanas.bssn.go.id and changed the home page of the site.

The Executive Director of the Institute for Community Studies and Advocacy (ELSAM), Wahyudi Djafar, considers this an irony. This is because the victims of this hacker attack are the main institutions in the governance of national cyber security.

"Hacking on the BSSN sub-domain site is very ironic, considering that this institution should have strong cybersecurity management, according to its authority", Wahyudi said in a statement, Wednesday, October 26.

As seen in Presidential Regulation Number 28 of 2021 concerning the National Cyber and Crypto Agency, the BSSN has the function of formulating cyber security standards, making technical policies in the fields of identification, detection, protection, prevention, and recovery of national cyber security incidents.

Wahyudi said that the recent series of attacks on government electronic systems, especially the BSSN, has the potential to reduce the level of public trust in the government's seriousness in protecting the security of state information systems.

Wahyudi considers that BSSN needs to take real action to ascertain whether the attacks experienced were caused by weak organizational management or aspects of negligence (human-error), which caused the attacks to be unanticipated.

"The length of the normalization process for sites that are attacked also needs to be considered by BSSN in evaluating the organization's internal management system", he said.

Therefore, Wahyudi urged BSSN to take immediate steps to ensure that national cyber security governance runs well and prevent hacking from happening again.

"ELSAM also encourages the government to seriously evaluate and harmonize several related laws and regulations, as well as prepare new cyber security legislation with a human-centered approach, which is needed to strengthen the national cyber security strategy", he concluded.