On Tuesday, 24th of October, the Spokesperson for BSSN presented some vital insight on the Security Day 2023 in Jakarta. Among all of his insightful presentations, he presented the cyber attack trend in 2023, which he and his team will take as a priority for the upcoming general election.
Cyber attack trend can be defined as popular attacks in a cyber-related field that shows up in many frequencies throughout a period of time. Cybersecurity itself is a fast-growing sector that always evolves and is never idle in the same position for a long time. This article will contain an explanation of the 2023 cyber attack trend that was listed by BSSN.
The upcoming 2024 general election in Indonesia is bringing unwanted threats to the nation’s security, either in the form of cyber or physical threats. During Security Day 2023 in Jakarta (October 24), Ariandi Putra presented the BSSN’s 2023 cyber attack trend.
Quoted from Antara, here are some attacks that Ariandi stated during the event, “web defacement, malware attack, phishing, hoax, brainwashing, including AI”. This section will explore and explain all those terms.
Explained.
- Web defacement
Web defacement is basically a web vandalism. Defacement is a type of attack that changes the visual of a website, and usually, the culprit would leave a message of what they want or the message that they want to deliver. Web defacement could also be seen as online activism.
An example of this attack is the attack on Probolinggo’s PDAM website in 2020. In which the attackers deemed the police to bring justice to Habib Rizieq.
- Malware attack
Malware is the most common attack when it comes to cyber attacks and the name that will come to many heads when they are being asked about cyber threats. Malware attacks are diverse with various kinds of objectives. The most common one is to steal information and then demand a payment to get the information back.
Here are some malware attacks that you need to know: Internet virus, trojan horse, USB or CD with virus on it.
- Phishing, hoax, and brainwashing
A phishing attack is a social engineering type of attack that plays with its victims’ psychology. Usually can be found by a fake download button, fake email, fake website, and so on that require its targets to voluntarily execute the action so the attack can take place.
Phishing can lead to malware attacks, information leakage, money robbery, and so on. Phishing, hoaxes, and brainwashing are in the same category of cyber attack, which falls into the social engineering attack type.
Social engineering attacks are characterized by the need for the targets’ voluntary action so the attack can be put into progress. Different from malware, web defacement, or any other hacking attack, social engineering attacks are easier to avoid (human resource training).
- AI
Artificial intelligence is a bit tacky to explain since it can be done in many unique manners. But quoted from CSO, AI has helped to speed up the hacking pace for some hackers with 66% of decision-makers in the cyber security field believing that AI could achieve attacks that no humans could.
Hackers can also use AI with prompts to create savvy phishing emails/messages. The help of AI has minimized the awkwardness that many phishing emails/messages pose.
Is BSSN ready?
Though we have already explained about the upcoming Indonesia general election in 2024 with BSSN and cyber threats that lurk in the shadow, it is still worth remembering that BSSN should try harder than ever to secure the upcoming election. Bring in as much help as possible, either from the private sector or from within the government itself. Cyber threats are not only harmful to election results and data, but threats like social engineering are harmful to many people, as they can spread hoaxes and misinformation easily. At the end of the day, only the culprit will gain advantages from the nation’s biggest democratic party after five years.
Read our other works:
• Indonesia Upcoming 2024 Election Cyber Problems
• Digging the Reasons Behind Annual Penetration Testing
• Which One Do You Need, VPN or DNS?
References:
- https://www.antaranews.com/berita/3789741/bssn-siapkan-tim-untuk-hadapi-serangan-siber-saat-pemilu
- https://www.liputan6.com/tekno/read/4434332/10-situs-web-pemda-diretas-hacker-minta-polisi-tegas-ke-rizieq-shihab
- https://www.ibm.com/topics/phishing
- https://www.csoonline.com/article/651125/emerging-cyber-threats-in-2023-from-ai-to-quantum-to-data-poisoning.html#