Indonesia urgers local hackers to find hotel bombers
Despite releasing two computer mockups last week of the Indonesian hotel bombers that implicated half the Indonesian population (and half of Asia for that matter), Indonesian police have as of yet still not caught the wanted suspects.
Then a few days ago somebody stumbled across a Blogspot blog in Indonesian and Arabic that claimed ‘Alqueda Indonesia’ were responsible for the bombings.
With absolutely no other leads to follow Indonesian police seem to have scrambled all over the site and pleaded for help from local Indonesian hackers to find out who wrote the blog post.
Police using freelance hackers to solve crime?…This isn’t going to end well.
The blog in question is called ‘Bushro‘ (Indonesian-english and Arabic-english translations. Note the post is in Arabic and Indonesians so you need both links to translate the entire page), was started sometime in July and contains one post ‘MEDIA TANDZIM AL QO’IDAH INDONESIA’ dated July 26th.
Yes you read that correctly, the sole major lead Indonesian police have on the hotel bombers is a one-post barely week old free blog that anyone could have started up.
Even more worryingly though, despite the questionable authenticity of Bushro is the fact that today Indonesian police officially released a statement asking for hackers to help them track down the authors.
“The cyber crime team is chasing (who is behind this)… hopefully, we can track them,” national police spokesman Nanan Soekarna said.
“There are a lot of smart hackers in Indonesia. Come on, try to prove that you can defend your people and country and provide information so we can catch them,” he said.
Secondly Blogspot is owned by Google.
As a country do you really want to be known as the guys who put out a virtual fatwa on Google’s Blogspot servers?
Less then a month ago the Melbourne International Film Festival was defaced by Chinese hackers after organisers told China to go f’ themselves when asked to remove a documentary on Uighur ‘leader’ Rebiya Kadeer.
The IP address used for the hack was of Chinese origin and although the government there would never admit it, it’s blatantly obvious the attack was in response to the film festival organiser’s response.
I mean does anyone really believe some random Chinese citizen cared enough to fight the great firewall of China just to deface a website of an international film festival their government wouldn’t let them see anyway?
Back in 2007 CNN ran a story exposing these government sponsored Chinese hackers. They operate from within the mainland and whilst they aren’t classified as government employees they are unofficially on the government’s payroll.
They operate from a bare apartment on a Chinese island. They are intelligent 20-somethings who seem harmless. But they are hard-core hackers who claim to have gained access to the world’s most sensitive sites, including the Pentagon.
In fact, they say they are sometimes paid secretly by the Chinese government — a claim the Beijing government denies.
I mean how far do governments want to go?
If in the near future what if I wrote something the Chinese or Indonesian governments don’t like, can I expect a visit from some seedy freelance hackers?
Whilst you’re never going to stop people hacking, the type of hacking that involves compromising private information that potentially puts people’s lives at risk is illegal for a reason. It’s a sad day when government’s of the world abandon ethics and start to publicly use hackers to target the civilian population.
Is it even effective?
The Melbourne Film Festival site was restored shortly after being defaced and someone in China is two dicks short of a threesome if they thought organisers would pull the plug. When was the last time someone taking some time out from farming World of Warcraft items to hack a website ever achieved anything?
As for trying to catch Indonesian suspects well I guess time will tell. Sadly if it does prove a successful tactic I imagine it’s going to catch on pretty quickly.
Relative anonymity means nothing to bloggers if governments start to use their own cyber spies to hunt you down. Imagine how many Iranian bloggers would have disappeared had Iran, apart from disabling facebook, twitter and the nations telecommunications network actively targeted those bringing us uncensored news.
Despite wanting the people resonsible for the hotel bombings to be found I for one hope this hacker search fails or at the very least turns up some brainwashed teenager who had nothing to do with the bombings. Maybe then the Indonesian police will be forced to do some actual you know, police work.
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