ABRI and govt told to give Internet hackers the chop

BANDARLAMPUNG (JP): The Armed Forces (ABRI) and the government must actively discourage Portuguese hackers, who have tried to infiltrate the homepages of ABRI and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, an Internet expert said here yesterday.

Onno W. Purbo said that actively discouraging these hackers meant anticipating and fighting the "electronic war". He was commenting on alleged Portuguese hackers who managed to add the word "propaganda" to the ABRI-Net's homepage early last week.

"We can't just sit back wait. ABRI and the government must be proactive in entering the Internet and ask other netters from other countries to block the Portuguese hackers," Onno was quoted as saying by Antara during a seminar on the Internet at the University of Lampung yesterday.

The Bandung-based expert said that so far ABRI and the government, through its agencies and institutions, had been inactive in the Internet communication network. "They just provide homepages for other netters."

"Homepages with very poor security systems are open to hackers, especially those from Portugal, with their anti- integration propaganda," he said.

The Armed Forces earlier announced that its Internet Task Force, in cooperation with Indonesian netters had "counter- hacked" the Portuguese hacker Toxyn.

ABRI Spokesman Brig. Gen. Slamet Supriadi said last week that the Portuguese intruder had failed to interfere with the contents on the ABRI homepage.

Onno, a computer expert at the Bandung Institute of Technology, said yesterday that "we should not have counter- hacked".

According to Internet communication rules, counter-hacking is unethical.

"We'd better improve the security system of our homepage so it is not too susceptible to hackers. There are loopholes in the security system of our homepage," he said.

He was of the opinion that the latest hackers were just teenagers who had accessed the homepage. "But it is possible that a certain group used them to launch anti-Indonesia drives," Onno said.

Onno said he was ready to cooperate with ABRI and the government to make their homepages better protected from hackers. (sur)