Presidential Secretariat Clarifies No Presidential Data Leak Occurred

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Head of the Presidential Secretariat Heru Budi Hartono made it clear that no presidential documents and letters were leaked to the internet as averse to allegations made by some members of the public.

"The State Secretariat will clarify this soon. There was no leak of presidential letters," Hartono stated here, Saturday, in response to information circulating on social media that alleged President Joko Widodo's (Jokowi's) letters and documents were leaked by a hacker.

The information alleging that presidential letters and top-secret National Intelligence Agency (BIN) letters had been leaked is a hoax, he remarked, adding that circulating the hoax is a violation of the Information and Electronic Transaction Law.

"I must affirm that it constitutes a violation of the Information and Electronic Transactions Law. I believe law enforcers will take legal actions and seek the suspect," he said.

Earlier, a hacker, known by the username Bjorka, claimed to have hacked the presidential data and obtained presidential letters and top-secret documents from the intelligence agency.

Bjorka's claim was later circulated by a Twitter account whose tweet turned viral and became a trending topic on social media until Saturday morning.

The tweet, forwarding Bjorka's claim, stated that presidential letters and top-secret BIN documents had been leaked.

Last August, the same hacker claimed to have obtained the data of 1,304,401,300 registered SIM card users, including their population identification number, telephone number, name of the cellular operator, and registration date. Bjorka also claimed to have shared two million sample data for free.

In response to recurring reports of hacking and personal data leak, director general of applications and informatics at the Communication and Information Ministry, Semuel Abrijani Pangerapan, emphasized that the ministry and its stakeholders are committed to addressing the alleged data leak.

He also reminded cellular operators and electronic system operators to conduct prompt checks in the event of an indication of data leakage.

"Every provider must have the ability to mitigate and (implement) security (measures), maintain confidentiality, mitigate the risk if it (data) leaks, (know) what should not be put together—this is what the organizers need to always do," he stated.

ANTARA

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