East Timor cyberwar on new global battlefield: The web

By Jules Bell

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia may be on the brink of a cyberwar, but no blood will be shed in this conflict nor lives lost due to bullets. The battlefield of such a war is the Internet, with bullets the words, and soldiers the hackers.

The global communication system we have rapidly adopted as the web is an information network in which our increasingly cybernetic society plays, works, does business and now wages war. It is becoming a conceptual space or site of political struggle, and a global high-tech battleground which transcends national geographic boundaries.

If the result of the Aug. 30, ballot for East Timor's future is perceived by pro-Timor activists as unfair or overly influenced by unrestrained intimidation on the part of pro- Indonesian factions, the conflict may mutate from the soil of the former Portuguese territory to the corridors of cyberspace.

Threats from proindependence hackers worldwide have sparked a charged discourse between the rival political entities involved. Pro-East Timor activist Jose Ramos-Horta, in a commentary in the Sydney Morning Herald on Aug. 18, offered his support to more than 100 mostly teenage hackers worldwide who are preparing to sabotage Indonesia's computer networks -- including the aviation industry.

The Herald reported that the Nobel peace laureate told hackers to "go for it" if no loss of life would result, and warned of a "desperate and ferocious" international campaign against Indonesia.

He said if Jakarta denied East Timor its UN-negotiated independence after the ballot, which may see a majority of voters reject an offer of autonomy, the plan had his full support. "This time, our manners will be cast aside," he said.

"This is terrorism against democracy," responded a senior official of Indonesia's foreign ministry, Dino Patti Djalal, speaking in the Melbourne newspaper The Age on Aug. 20. Djalal said he had referred the matter to the coordinating minister for political affairs and security, for "preventative action".

The Indonesian government has also been the target of past accusations regarding hostile cyber activity. Reported on Aug. 19 at ZDNetUK's website, in January hackers allegedly working on behalf of the government disabled the Irish ISP, Connect Ireland, home to the East Timor independence movement's Internet site.

"These guys were real professionals," said the ISP's technical manager John Plunkett, "they really knew what they were doing and they caused some major league damage." The ISP also said it was preparing for an impending computer war.

In suit with history's dominant political discourses and resistance movements, the employment of the Internet for political expression and conflict is an inevitable consequence of the information revolution.

The inherent nature of cyberspace lends itself to political activity. Activists can recruit from a global pool of computer users, who it could be said relish empowerment through technology. Information transmission is rapid and largely unregulated. Further, a communication infrastructure's dependence on the very thing that makes it possible, technology, is ironically its greatest vulnerability.

Clans of hackers waging war in cyberspace is neither particularly new nor uncommon. Cyberwarriors from China and Taiwan have long attacked their rival nations' webpages, defacing them with pictures, sound, animation and political commentary.

Successful attacks on institutions such as NASA, the CIA, the Pentagon and particularly large multinational corporations occur relatively frequently on the web. Even Amnesty International's website was not spared the attention of hackers known as the "four man dream team", determined to make their mark in cyberspace.

Indonesian government webpages have also suffered their share of cyberattacks. Hackers bearing names such as LithiumError and Toxyn have to date orchestrated two major attacks on the country's websites. The altered sites are exhibited like trophy cabinets in archives freely accessible on the web.

In 1997, hackers attacked the Indonesian Department of Foreign Affair's webpages, posting pro-East Timor political content welcoming visitors to the "Fascist Republic of Indonesia" and claimed; "East Timor is not Indonesia".

Calling themselves "Portuguese hackers against Indonesia", the clan said they "hope to call attention to the necessity of self- determination and independence of the people of Timor, oppressed and violated for decades by the government of Indonesia". January last year saw an anti-Soeharto hacker campaign deface 15 different government webpages, including Indonesia's National Police and Golkar sites.

The threat to Indonesia's computer network extends beyond just targeting government websites however, and the inevitable question is: could hackers really disable Indonesia's computer network? If hackers can break into the CIA's computer network, then to what extent can they achieve the necessary access to Indonesia's computer systems to disable them?

Ramos-Horta told the Herald that a "dozen viruses were being designed to infect computers if there is fraud in the Aug. 30 ballot on the territory's future". He added that the team of hackers from Europe and North America had prepared a campaign that would cause economic devastation to Indonesia, directed at computers controlling banking, finance, the military and aviation.

The extent to which this will be successful if initiated, or nothing more than a "threat" as described by Djalal, is difficult to predict given the lack of past case studies. Ramos-Horta said in the Herald that hackers had contacted him and demonstrated what they could do, adding; "They definitely have the ability to do this."

Speaking from their experience following the successful cyberattack and disabling of their systems, Connect Ireland reflected upon cyberwar. "It's going to be a new style of war. You can see these tactics becoming part of official government policy and a potential weapon," said the service provider's project director Martin Maguire, after his experience earlier this year, as reported at msnbc.com.

National Police spokesman Brig. Gen. Togar Sianipar said that he was unaware of the hackers' threats. He said that the police website had twice been attacked in the past, and that it was very difficult to trace or prevent such attacks. Regarding the potential for hackers to attack Indonesian computer systems, he said the police would take it as a warning.

It is indicative of cyberspace that a territory the size of East Timor is at the center of what has become a global issue, and has attracted participants worldwide.

If a cyberwar does ensue, it will be an early example of what will no doubt become a new style of warfare for the future. Technology aside though, the dispute still rests with the decisions and motivations of real people, whether connected to a computer or not.