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.