TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Director General of Immigration Silmy Karim revealed that the passport data leak that went viral some time ago allegedly took place in January 2022. The data leaked was suspected to have happened to 34 million passports belonging to Indonesian citizens.

"It happened in January 2022, approximately one and a half years ago. We have identified it, and we are still pursuing who might be responsible," he said when spoken to in Bali at the IMFEST 2023 event, July 18.

Silmy said that the Immigration Office is working with the Ministry of Communication and Informatics and the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN) to investigate the alleged leak.

Silmy said that passport holders' the biometric data in the form of fingerprints and face of are safe and had not been leaked. He said the data that was allegedly leaked was only in the form of text and the data structure is not the one currently used by the Directorate General of Immigration.

"That is not data from Immigration. I will follow up and respond to this as best I can. Of course we will increase our vigilance," he said.

Suspicions that Indonesians' passports' data had been leaked was first revealed by Indonesian Ethical Hacker founder, Teguh Aprianto, who posted the information to his personal Twitter account. Teguh said the data leak portal also provided a sample of one million data. According to him, the data looks quite legitimate, with time stamps between 2009 and 2020.

"The one million sample data provided looks valid, and it appears to be the same Bjorka if we look at the domain that this hacker uses," Teguh said, regarding the data leak.

M JULNIS FIRMANSYAH

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