CPJ Condemns DDoS Attack on Tempo
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned a cyber attack in the form of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) against the media outlet Tempo. The attack, which has been ongoing since 5 June 2026, flooded the Tempo website server with fake internet traffic, disrupting public access to the main page of the tempo.co website.
CPJ Asia-Pacific Regional Director Beh Lih Yi stated that this cyber attack is a cowardly attempt to silence Tempo for reporting on alleged corruption cases. He stressed that this cyber attack will not succeed in preventing Tempo from uncovering violations that have occurred. “The perpetrators behind this large-scale and organised intimidation campaign should be ashamed of themselves,” Beh said in his statement on Thursday, 11 June 2026.
Tempo’s news portal server has been receiving DDoS attacks since Friday, 5 June 2026. Tempo Digital Chief Technology Officer Heru Tjatur Tjahja said the attacks received by Tempo in recent days were massive. As of Monday, 8 June 2026, Tempo’s technology team recorded a total of 24.9 million requests directed at their server. According to him, this DDoS cyber attack used bots that sent very large amounts of internet traffic to the site’s server. Based on analysis by Tempo’s technology team, the attack pattern took place sporadically with high intensity at certain times.
Tjatur said the attackers tended to launch their actions from evening until early morning. One of the largest waves of attacks occurred between 8:30 p.m. and midnight, with a total of 12.97 million attacks in a span of just two hours. “The first intensity was 12.97 million attacks in just two hours. Starting from 8:30 p.m. until midnight, the attackers carried out digital attacks,” he said on Monday, 8 June 2026.
Preliminary analysis indicates the source of the attacks did not only come from Indonesia. Tempo’s technology team found traces of attacks from several countries, including Colombia, the United States, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Mexico. He suspects the DDoS attack is a continuation of a hacking attempt that previously targeted Tempo’s content management system (CMS) at the end of May. In that incident, hackers cancelled the publication of a number of articles that had been posted so that the public could not find them on the internet.
According to Tjatur, the articles targeted by the hacking were related to online gambling news and reporting on corruption cases, one of which concerned customs and excise corruption currently under investigation by the Corruption Eradication Commission. However, Tempo’s CMS design limits user authority, so the hackers could not delete articles permanently and could only unpublish them. The editorial team has republished dozens of hacked articles so they can be accessed by the public again. “Those who attacked apparently did not like it, so they then carried out a DDoS digital attack,” he said.