Internet worm to have small impact on Indonesia

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.