Online article reveals hacker's ID

Online article reveals hacker's ID

Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Witness Affan Basalamah, a member of the General Elections
Committee (KPU) information technology (IT) team, told the
Central Jakarta District Court on Tuesday that he had obtained
the name of the KPU website hacker through an article he found on
the Internet.

Testifying during the trial of Dani Firmansyah, who stands
accused of hacking into the KPU website, Affan said that he just
arrived at the Borobudur Hotel, the KPU tabulation center, on
April 17 at around 8 p.m. from Surabaya when a colleague informed
him of the "attack".

"At the time, all network cables running in and out of the
website server had been disconnected," he said. "My colleagues
then told me what had happened -- that the website's contents had
been altered and that the network cables had been physically
unplugged to prevent further attacks."

Affan later tried to track down the hacker by analyzing the
server's log files -- which contain a record of the Internet
Protocol (IP) numbers of computers that had accessed the website
-- and found a suspicious IP number under the login name of
"xuser".

"I was sure it was the hacker because the login name appeared
right at the time the break-in occurred," he said.

Using the information, he then conducted a search through the
Internet and found an online article under a similar name.

"The article was written by 'Dani Firmansyah', who used
'xuser' as his nickname," he said.

Affan later passed on the information to the Jakarta Police
cyber crime unit officers who were handling the case.

In the last session of the trial, witness Second Insp. Sugeng
Priyadi from the cyber crime unit said he was ordered to follow
the lead to a hacker community in Yogyakarta. He then received
information from another hacker confirming Dani's identity, which
lead to his arrest on April 22.

The defense questioned the evidence of the witnesses called by
the prosecution as none of them were actual eyewitnesses to the
incident.

"We object to the fact that witness Affan was still in
Surabaya," lawyer Mukhtar Zuhdy said. "Their evidence is
redundant and repetitive."

Presiding judge Hamdi accepted the defense arguments and asked
prosecutor Ramos Horta to better prepare the witnesses, and start
calling his expert witnesses.

Besides Affan, Monday's session also heard evidence from
witnesses R. M. Aryana and Husni Fahmi, both of whom are also
members of KPU's IT team.

The trial was adjourned until Sept. 22, when more witnesses
will be heard.