Jakarta – The official website belonging to the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) was hacked and the home page changed to a display of an online gambling site on Monday January 6.
"On Monday, January 6, 2025, the YLBHI website home page couldn't be accessed by the public. The image that appeared on the website was of an online gambling site", YLBHI Chairperson Muhammad Isnur said in a statement on Tuesday January 7.
Then, later in the afternoon, the YLBHI website home page changed to display an announcement that the site had been blocked by the Ministry of Communication and Information (Kominfo). For the time being, the YLBHI website cannot be accessed because it is in the process of being repaired.
According to the YLBHI's records, this is the third attack that has occurred since October 2024. The impact of the initial hack was that several Legal Aid Foundation (LBH) office websites that are under the YLBHI domain could not be accessed, including LBH Manado, LBH Papua, LBH Palangkaraya and the West Kalimantan Project Base website.
The YLBHI has found a pattern that the hacking is related to YLBHI's reports, criticism and responses to the running of government. Because, over the last three months, the YLBHI has published press releases on their website every week.
"Everything is centred on our response to the [October 20] inauguration of [President] Prabowo [Subianto] and [Vice President] Gibran [Rakabuming Raka], the legal and human rights situation in 2024, violence by the police, opposition to the 12 percent increase in VAT, along with the most recent in 2025 being YLBHI's statement that Jokowi [former President Joko Widodo] deserves to be called a corrupt leader, a violator of the law, human rights", said Isnur.
Isnur said that after the October attack, the YLBHI team checked the website's security and found that there was more than one backdoor. This, said Isnur, was fixed and the YLBHI and LBH offices websites were restored following the first hacking.
After last October however, similar incidents occurred starting in mid-December through to the latest hack yesterday, on Monday morning.
"Attacks on the YLBHI websites increased after October 2024, ranging from denial of service, brute force, malware to SQL injection [attacks]. Since then, we have added more security layers to our system", said Isnur.
"However, we cannot guarantee 100 percent security after these incidents. In addition to this attack, we also suspect that the large amount of traffic on the YLBHI website has had an impact on the number of attacks and account takeover attempts", he added.
Furthermore, the YLBHI has also condemned the hacking attack on their website. Isnur said that hacking, doxing, account takeovers and other digital attacks on civil society are attempts to silence the critical voices of citizens and threaten the public's struggle for democracy, human rights and justice in Indonesia, which must not be ignored.
"The YLBHI emphasises that this silencing effort will not frighten and will not stop the YLBHI's efforts to continue fighting for human rights, democracy and the principles of the rule of law", he concluded. (dis/DAL)
- ICW researcher doxed after commenting on Jokowi's corrupt leader nomination. Tribun News – January 3, 2025
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Situs YLBHI Diretas Jadi Judol Usai Kritik Pelanggaran Hukum dan HAM".]
