Cyberwar reality

The Indonesian Armed Forces (ABRI) made the first physical contact in the cyberwar this month when a group of Portuguese youths sympathetic to the cause of East Timor separatists allegedly tampered with its Internet homepage. The damage was kept to a minimum, and the website was immediately repaired.

This is not the first time an official Indonesian website on the Internet has been attacked by the same hackers. As reported by Republika daily newspaper, previous victims include the sites of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Agency for the Development and Application of Technology, the National Institute of Sciences and the state-run Airlangga University.

The way the hackers arbitrarily picked targets suggest they are not as much politically motivated, as simply a bunch of kids out playing, or abusing, the cyber technology. Tampering the websites belonging to education institutions serves no political purpose at all.

Still, it would be wrong to dismiss the hackers lightly or underestimate the potential damage they could have caused.

In this cyberspace era, the Internet has become a powerful tool to disseminate information, whether it is news or propaganda. The Internet revolutionized information technology beyond most people's imagination only a few years ago. Not only can news now be delivered as it happens, the technology is also available on an even wider scale than previous information media. This can only enhance democracy.

But there is a downside to the Internet technology. Anyone with access to a computer and a telephone line can have access to the Internet, including bulletin boards and news groups. This means that all kinds of news and information can be found on the Internet and one can even create their own homepage. This often makes it difficult to distinguish between news and propaganda.

This is one of the reasons why many Indonesian government agencies feel compelled to open their own websites. When ABRI decided to launch its homepage in 1995, for example, one of its goals was to counter what it called "garbage" information in cyberspace that sought to discredit Indonesia. ABRI and other government agencies have launched counter operations in the war of propaganda on the Internet. The Internet has now become an inseparable tool for Indonesia in its diplomacy.

One Internet expert said government agencies have not fully exploited the advantages of the Net. They have not moved beyond establishing their websites, downloading data and information, and hoping that people would come to them and read.

They can certainly do a lot more than that.

In this cyberspace era, in which anyone who has control or access over information wields power, mastering the information technology has become even more imperative. The recent hackers incident exposed weaknesses in the security of the government's homepages. It was even more disconcerting to see that some people have retaliated by attacking the homepages of the hackers. While the action of the hackers was deplorable and goes against established Internet ethics, retaliation in kind does not make it right. Like in any war, there are rules and ethics to observe in a cyberwar.

But there is an even more important factor than having access and mastering the Internet technology in the war of propaganda: credibility. One can establish a state-of-the-art homepage that is foolproof from hackers, but it is meaningless if one does not have credibility. This, more than anything else, ultimately decides who wins the cyberwar.