April 20, 2025 | 12:34 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) and the Journalist Safety Committee (KKJ) strongly condemn the cyber attack in the form of distributed denial of service (DDoS) that struck media outlets, including Suara.com, last Tuesday, April 15, 2025. This attack rendered the Suara.com site inaccessible for some time.
The Editor-in-Chief of Suara.com, Suwarjono, described the DDoS attack as lasting for one and a half hours and being massive. "Almost 285 million DDoS attacks occurred in 1.5 hours," Suwarjono said in his statement last Tuesday.
According to him, the attack was carried out by bots with IP addresses from several countries, primarily from the European region. "Random attacks from various country regions," he said. He added that the IPs used mostly originated from the Netherlands, Croatia, Indonesia, Romania, Australia, and the United States.
In addition, Suara.com's Special Coverage Channel (LiKS) has also experienced intense cyber attacks in the last 72 hours. This channel is known for often addressing critical issues, ranging from politics, law, human rights, security, to the economy. Suwarjono stated that the articles carried in that channel are the core of Suara.com's journalism.
In relation to this, the Advocacy Chair of AJI and Coordinator of KKJ, Erick Tanjung, highlighted that digital attacks on the media are not new and have tended to increase in the past year. "We have seen a rising trend of attacks against journalists in the past year, the latest being digital attacks," he said when contacted by Tempo on Saturday, April 19, 2025.
He referred to a similar incident experienced by Tempo after publishing an investigative report related to online gambling practices involving politicians. Now, Suara.com has become the next target with an attack identified as DDoS. "We observed this attack based on the verifications of AJI and KKJ, at the moment, due to its connection with the news or journalistic work," he said.
Although it has not been confirmed which article triggered the attack, Erick mentioned the possibility of its connection to reports criticizing government policies. He added that many other mainstream media outlets have also published similar critiques, such as the TNI bill and the Free Nutritious Meals program. "The latest one has a lot of news regarding criticisms of the Free Nutritious Meals program."
AJI and KKJ condemn the attack as it is considered a threat to press freedom and harmful to the public. "The attack prevents the public from accessing the news on the site during the attack," says Erick.
Currently, AJI and KKJ have conducted identification and are assisting in the site's recovery process. Regarding legal action, AJI is still awaiting a decision from the media. They also urge the government to intervene and resolve the legal processes for the previously reported digital attacks. "As a country, the government must ensure press freedom in Indonesia. For example, all reported attacks must have their legal processes completed," he said.
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