Indonesia Bank Cyber Attack Fears: OJK Says Banks Are Safe as FortiGuard Threat-Map Screenshots Spread

No Indonesian bank has reported a breach, but screenshots of Fortinet's FortiGuard Labs threat map showing hundreds of thousands of attack attempts on the country have spread on social media since 7 November. The financial regulator, Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (OJK), said on 8 November that the banking system is still safe based on its monitoring so far, and has told banks to stay on watch around the clock.

What the screenshots show

Industry.co.id reported on the evening of 7 November that the dashboard showed about 350,600 attack activities aimed at Indonesia, about 214,000 of them against banking, finance and insurance. By 13:37 WIB on 8 November, Kompas counted 657,000 attacks blocked in 24 hours, of them 262,000 against finance and 102,000 against government.

Those are blocked attempts.

The counts cover scanning, intrusion attempts and malicious traffic stopped by sensors, and are "bukan jumlah serangan yang berhasil" (not the number of successful attacks). Pratama Persadha of the research group CISSReC told Kompas that what matters is how many get through the defences and cause damage, and that he can't see FortiGuard's internal telemetry.

What OJK has told banks

Dian Ediana Rae, OJK's chief executive for banking supervision, said banks must stay on alert 24 hours a day and may temporarily hold certain transactions to verify them when they see an anomaly. The regulator's IT supervisors are coordinating with the IT staff of every bank, and OJK has written to bank boards with preventive steps.

The national cyber agency BSSN hadn't answered Kompas's questions by publication. Deputy communications minister Nezar Patria said "Saya cek dulu" (I'll check first) and pointed to BSSN as the agency in charge of handling attacks.

Malaysia's bank incidents the same week

Across the border, a Bank Rakyat website was defaced on 6 November, and the National Security Council later confirmed disruptions at several unnamed financial institutions. Malaysians had shared screenshots of the same FortiGuard map on 7 November.