Secretary General of the House of Representatives, Indra Iskandar, confirmed that the high state institution’s YouTube account was hacked. This was observed on Wednesday, 6th September 2023.
The House of Representatives YouTube account has been hacked and now features online gambling since this Wednesday morning. As of 10.15 pm, the account had not been restored.
Iskandar stated that, due to the hack, the House of Representatives YouTube screen displayed a video containing online gambling promotions. “For the time being, there are indications that the House of Representatives YouTube social media account was hacked, with another party gaining access to the House of Representatives YouTube account and posting online gambling videos,” said Iskandar to the media, on Wednesday.
In this regard, the Secretariat General has taken various steps. One of them is to contact Google Indonesia to restore the YouTube account. Indra said Google Indonesia has forwarded the request to the Google Centre for account recovery. “This was done so that the account login can be used again by the House of Representatives,” he said.
Not only that, Iskandar mentioned that the House of Representatives Secretariat General’s internal information and technology (IT) team also conducted manual recovery. According to him, this was done online from Google’s system independently.
Roy Surya, former Minister of Youth and Sports, explained that the account admin should have been more cautious in guarding it. This includes anticipating potential issues.
“No system can be guaranteed secure,” he said. However, this should have been anticipated, especially since the hacking had been ongoing for hours.
“The broadcast of at least four live video shows, two videos with thumbnails of the Canli Yayindayiz Slot Line, and two videos with thumbnails of the Fikret Canli Yayin Slot on the official YouTube account belonging to the House of Representatives of Indonesia is indeed a very embarrassing situation,” said Surya.