TEMPO.CO, Jakarta Spokeswoman for the Coordinating Ministry of Economic Affairs Alia Karenin spoke about the alleged hacking of the minister’s smartphone Airlangga Hartarto. The alleged hack was reported by Reuters which said several officials, including Airlangga, received an email from Apple explaining that its email was the target of the hack.

Alia confirmed the official email account of the Coordinating Minister of the Economy (official email account) not in-install in a personal smartphone belonging to Airlangga Hartarto. And so far there are no notifications or messages spyware files to the official email.

“Coordinating Minister Airlangga uses several cellphone (HP) used for different purposes, not just iPhones,” he said in a statement written on Friday, September 30, 2022.

Quoted by Reuters, 30 September 2022, it was said that around 12 senior Indonesian government and military officials were targeted Spyware of Israel at the end of last year. Besides Airlangga, the targets of the attack were said to be high-ranking military personnel, two regional diplomats and advisers from the Indonesian Ministry of Defense and Foreign Affairs.

Apple did not disclose the identity or number of targeted users. However, Apple and security researchers said the recipients of the alerts were targeted using ForcedEntry, advanced software previously used by Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group.

Apart from ForcedEntr, NSO Group also owns other software, namely Spyware Pegasus. In an investigation late last year by a coalition of media outlets around the world, it was revealed that Spyware it targets journalists, activists, politicians and includes heads of state from around the world.

The investigation, dubbed Project Pegasus, also uncovered a list of numbers belonging to hundreds of other government officials suspected of being infiltrated by Pegasus spyware. Including a total of 180 journalists from various media namely CNN, New York Times, Bloomberg, Le Monde and El Pais were also included.

Indeed, a smartphone number belonging to French President Emmanuel Macron was among the numbers on the list, along with another number belonging to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, as well as Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

KHORY ALFARIZI | Reuters

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