Defara Dhanya, Jakarta – The website of the Association for Elections and Democracy, Indonesia (Perludem) was hacked. The site was transformed into an advertisement for online gambling, and the organization's email communication activities were disrupted.

Perludem's Executive Director, Khoirunnisa Nur Agustyati, confirmed the hacking. She revealed that this cyber attack had been ongoing for about a month. "Our website was hacked and transformed into an online gambling site," Nisa said when contacted by Tempo on Monday, May 26, 2025.

Nisa explained that the hacking disruption began on April 16, 2025. She said that the hacker infiltrated the server and inserted malware scripts into the files of the perludem.org website. As a result, Google search page indexing displayed online gambling ads, even though the site could still be accessed at that time.

Perludem has taken steps to recover, including removing and updating infected files, resetting the server password, and scanning site files. However, these efforts have not been entirely successful. "Then, on April 21, 2025, it was discovered that the hacker had successfully reentered the system and changed the server access password," she said.

Furthermore, Nisa mentioned that the hacker even took over the perludem.org domain and moved it to another service provider. Consequently, the site now entirely showcases online gambling promotions. This change has also disrupted Perludem staff emails using the perludem.org domain.

"Yesterday, our website was accessible again, but the hacker still owns it," Nisa said. "We are concerned that someone who accesses and downloads something from Perludem might fall victim to phishing or hacker attacks."

Perludem Program Manager Fadli Ramadhanil stated that the information technology team has been attempting to recover, including communicating with the server provider. According to him, the current situation is quite worrying because the hacker still has complete control of the site.

"We are making a series of recovery efforts, but the situation is indeed worrying. The online gambling owner has complete control of the site," he said.

He admitted that he did not know the exact motive behind the hacking. "We don't know because the content seemed normal and routine. We don't know if anything is wrong." Fadli also mentioned that one of the prepared plans is to create a new website.

Source: https://en.tempo.co/read/2011119/hackers-breach-indonesias-perludem-site-to-promote-online-gamblin