BSSN Site Hacked, Cyber Security Expert: This Is Revenge

Hackers managed to break into the BSSN site. (photo: doc.unsplash)

JAKARTA - Recently, government websites have often been targeted by cyber criminals, and this time the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN) website has also become a victim of deface hacking, after the Setkab website.

The BSSN website with the address pusmanas.bssn.go.id was reportedly hacked from a post on Twitter on Wednesday, October 20 by @son1x777. In his upload, it says the perpetrator is "theMxOnday".

Responding to this incident, cyber security expert Pratama Persadha said that this action was an act of revenge, where previously an Indonesian citizen had hacked a Brazilian state website.

"It was written by the defacement actor that this action was carried out to avenge the alleged perpetrator from Indonesia who had hacked the Brazilian state website," said Pratama in a statement received by VOI, Monday, October 25.

From the monitoring of the VOI team, until now the site is also not accessible. According to Pratama, the BSSN site experienced a deface hack. Where, the hacker changes the appearance, the changes can cover the entire page or only in certain parts. For example, the website font is changed, annoying ads appear, to changes in the overall page content.

"The BSSN should have a mitigation plan or BCP (Business Continuity Planning) from the start when a cyber attack occurs, because the main CSIRT (Computer Security Incident Response Team) in Indonesia is BSSN," said Pratama.

Pratama added, if you look at the good security system in BSSN, it seems that there is a violation of the SOP for the link on pusmanas.bssn.go.id, because it may not go through the Penetration Test process first when it will be published.

"If you check the attack, maybe you can find out why the firewall can bypass the attack to the vulnerable gap. Even a simple attack, if it escapes the firewall, it can cause great damage. Don't think that all deface attacks are light attacks. , it could be that the hackers have entered into," explained Pratama.

"It is necessary to carry out digital forensics and an overall information security audit. It is unfortunate that BSSN as an institution that should be the most secure in cybersecurity, just because of a small, unnecessary mistake, it turns out to be easy to hack. The most important thing is that the data is currently stored in encrypted form So even if it is stolen, hackers will not be able to read the contents," he added.

In the world of cybersecurity, said Pratama, there is no information system that is truly 100 percent secure. Important sites in the United States (US) such as the FBI, CIA and NASA have also experienced hacks.

"One solution is that security audits or pentests can be carried out regularly, both with a black box and white box approach. The method used can be passive or active penetration," said Pratama.

He explained, specifically for the Web Defacement pentest, the tests that need to be done include Configuration Management Testing, Authentication Testing, Session Management Testing, Authorization Testing, Data Validation Testing and Web Service Testing. Tools that can be used include Arachni, OWASP Zed Attack Proxy Project, Websploit and Acunetic.

Another solution stately is to complete the PDP Bill (Personal Data Protection Bill) immediately. Because, in the PDP Law there is coercion or a mandate to force all state institutions to improve IT infrastructure, human resources and even adopt regulations that are pro-cyber security. Without the PDP Law, hacking incidents such as government websites will repeat themselves.