We will check if there is poor management of data
Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Communication and Informatics Ministry has said that it will investigate the alleged leaking of 337 million population data sets from a government database.

"Our population is 275 million, while there are more than 300 million of the (alleged leaked) data, meaning it is disproportionate, therefore we will check it," the ministry's Director General of Public Information and Communication, Usman Kansong, said here on Monday.

He informed that the ministry will summon the manager of the population data, the Directorate General of Population and Civil Registration (Dukcapil) of the Home Affairs Ministry.

In addition, he said, his office will coordinate with the National Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN) to probe the leak.

The ministry will listen to both institutions' reports.

If the allegation of the data leak is found to be true, BSSN will conduct an audit to investigate it, and the results of the audit will be reported to the ministry.

"We will check if there is poor management of data. It has been regulated in Governmental Regulation (PP) No. 71 of 2019 (concerning the implementation of electronic systems and transactions) on what sanctions we can impose on the data managers," Kansong said.

The alleged data leak was revealed by Twitter user @DailyDarkWeb on Saturday (July 15).

The user claimed that as many as 337,225,465 rows of population data managed by Dukcapil were sold on a hacker forum.

In a screenshot of the hacker forum page shared by @DailyDarkWeb, a hacker with the account name RRR claimed to have obtained 337 million rows of data from the dukcapil.kemendagri.go.id website.

The data contained vital information such as population identification number (NIK), place of birth, religion, marital status, divorce certificate, mother's name, occupation, and passport numbers.

Director General of Population and Civil Registration Teguh Setyabudi on Monday said that the format of the population data that were allegedly leaked was different from the one applied for Dukcapil's database.

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Translator: Fathur R, Kenzu
Editor: Sri Haryati
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