Internet worm to have small impact on Indonesia
Arya Abhiseka, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
A recent global Internet virus-like attack, which slowed down Internet traffic tremendously and halted banking services in several countries, has proven to have had only a minor impact on Indonesia.
The Slammer, as analysts like to call the worm, sought out vulnerable computers on the Internet to infect at about 5:30 GMT (12:30 p.m. Jakarta time) on Saturday, using a popular database software from Microsoft Corp. called "SQL Server 2000" or "MSDE 2000" that were not updated with security patches.
The worm, which is believed to have originated in Hong Kong, crashed servers and congested traffic on the global network, slowing down Web browsing and e-mail deliveries.
Adeng Amat, a multimedia division officer of state-owned telecommunication company, PT Telkom, said on Monday that Internet services around the country would also experience a slowdown.
"Internet service providers, including PT Telkom are experiencing a 'bottleneck' situation in the flow of information, resulting in slow services," he said.
He said that the worm was eating up much bandwidth, resulting in a traffic jam-like situation in the Internet network globally.
Various countries, which are highly "wired" by the Internet network, namely Finland, Japan, South Korea, Canada and the United States, have reportedly suffered the effects as the worm attacked by scanning victim computers randomly and aggressively, sending out thousands of probes in a second, thereby saturating many Internet data pipelines.
Bank of America Corp., one of America's largest banks, was reportedly experiencing technical problems as customers were denied access to withdraw their money from 13,000 of the bank's ATM machines.
However, spokesmen for Bank Mandiri, Lippo Bank and Bank Universal said that their banks had not experienced a similar problem.
"Thus far, our information and technology department has not reported any problem and we have not received any complaints from our customers," said Soeswidijono, head of corporate communications of Bank Mandiri.
Marcelus Ardiwinata, an analyst of the Indonesian Internet Society explained that Indonesia's level of Internet banking was low compared to the countries that were greatly affected by the worm.
"The worm attacked through the Internet, whereas most banks here still have not implemented Internet banking," he said.
The Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) was also unaffected by the worm, in contrast to the Korean Stock Exchange, which witnessed its shares falling to a 13-month low as investors steered away from putting orders through Internet brokerage, as a result of the slow Internet downloads. South Korea is the world's most wired country.
Kristian, a stock broker said that the JSX was not experiencing any major problems.
"We are not as highly wired, as other countries," he said.
Roy Suryo, an information and telecommunication analyst, also played down the global effect of the Slammer worm and said that Indonesia would not be tremendously affected by the virus, due to the low computer and Internet penetration in the country.
"There are still only about four million Internet users in Indonesia and only a percentage of those would be affected by the attack," he said.