ABRI and govt told to give Internet hackers the chop

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)