[Weekend Briefing] Indonesian voters’ information allegedly exposed

By Dain Oh and Kuksung Nam, The Readable
Nov. 25, 2022 7:38PM KST

“Weekend Briefing” is a weekly newsletter that is sent to The Readable’s subscribers every Friday. Cybersecurity journalists for The Readable carefully select important news stories from the previous week and deliver them in a compact form. Topics encompass cybercrime, geopolitics, and privacy. There are no costs involved with a subscription, and some content, such as the monthly ransomware index report, is only available to those who subscribe to our newsletters.

Hello, this is Dain Oh and Kuksung Nam in South Korea. The Readable has picked five news articles to share with you. Have a great weekend!

1. Indonesian voters’ information allegedly exposed

While the Indonesian presidential election is scheduled for early 2024, a black hat hacker uploaded what is allegedly Indonesian voters’ information onto the dark web. The hacker who goes by “OKE” on the notorious hacking forum Breached claimed that he or she stole 186 million Indonesians’ personal data from the general elections commission of Indonesia, Komisi Pemilihan Umum.

Encouraging users to buy his or her database, OKE wrote in the posting that the database is “a complete list of Indonesian voters, although it is the data from 2013 to 2014.” OKE further added that “you can find any Indonesians through this data, including their families.” According to the claim, the database includes names, genders, birth dates, marital statuses, occupations, and addresses.

There was a similar breach in 2020 and 2021. In 2020, 2.3 million voters’ information was disclosed onto the dark web. The KPU investigated the released data and concluded that it was authentic. While revealing the information, the anonymous hacker threatened to expose more than 200 million Indonesians’ citizenship data as the next step. A year later, 200 million Indonesians’ private data was uploaded onto the same hacking forum, Raidforum, by a new member. It is unclear if OKE’s database has any connections to the previous breaches.

2. South Korea considers imposing cybersecurity sanctions on North Korea

South Korea is planning to impose tough sanctions against North Korea’s illicit cyber activities as a countermeasure to the country’s growing nuclear threats. The South Korean foreign ministry announced that they are deliberating on leveling sanctions against individuals who are suspected to have been involved with the illegal actions in cyberspace by the North Korean government.

3. South Korean cybersecurity firms put up strong Q3

South Korean cybersecurity companies reported higher revenue in the fiscal third quarter compared to last year. SK shieldus, Ahnlab, and SECUI, one of the biggest cybersecurity companies in the country, reported increases in quarterly net income compared to the same period the year before.

4. SK Shieldus and Douzone sign MOU: Security enhanced ERP

South Korean security firm SK Shieldus and enterprise resource planning software firm Douzone signed a memorandum of understanding on Thursday. The two companies will cooperate to enhance the security of the business solutions that they offer for their corporate customers, including ransomware response and access control systems.

5. The Readable launches its advisory board to broaden readership

Six-month-old media startup The Readable held its first advisory board meeting on Friday with a group of experts from academia, industry, and journalism regarding its status and strategy. The advisory board, while each member is representing information technology, information security, and media, will meet every quarter to discuss The Readable’s contents and reporting with a shared aim to deliver quality journalism for our global audience. Below are the members who attended today’s advisory board meeting.

Jungduk Kim from People-Centric Security Forum
Yongtae Shin from Soongsil University
Keunjin Kim from Spiceware
Kyungeun Lee from swIDch
Minjeong Park from CIOT
Kangman Lee from FASOO
Kyungeun Lee from Asian American Journalists Association

hello@thereadable.co

S2W data insight analyst (DIA) team and cyber threat intelligence (CTI) group TALON contributed to this report.

The cover image of this article was designed by Sangseon Kim.

Dain Oh is an award-winning cybersecurity journalist based in South Korea and the founding editor-in-chief of The Readable by S2W. Before joining S2W, she worked as a reporter for The Electronic Times, the top IT newspaper in Korea, covering the cybersecurity industry on an in-depth level. She reported numerous exclusive stories, and her work related to the National Intelligence Service led to her being honored with the Journalist of the Year Award in 2021 by the Korea Institute of Information Security and Cryptology in a unanimous decision. She was also the first journalist to report on the hacking of vulnerable wallpads in South Korean apartments, which later became a nation-wide issue.

Kuksung Nam is a cybersecurity journalist for The Readable. She covers cybersecurity issues in South Korea, including the public and private sectors. Prior to joining The Readable, she worked as a political reporter for one of the top-five local newspapers in South Korea, The Kyeongin Ilbo, where she reported several exclusive stories regarding the misconduct of local government officials. She is currently focused on issues related to anti-fraud, as well as threats and crimes in cyberspace. She is a Korean native who is fluent in English and French, and she is interested in delivering the news to a global audience.