Project Multatuli hit by cyber attack, Indonesian journalists assembled in defence

The independent journalist collective that carries public journalism in its idealistic form, Project Multatuli, was hit by a cyber attack after it published the article "Tiga Anak Saya Diperkosa" (My Three Children were Raped). The attack rendered the website inaccessible.

Project Multatuli on 6 October first published an article that reported a child sexual abuse case in East Luwu, South Sulawesi. On the same day, their website became inaccessible. At the beginning, the collective thought that it was due to the high traffic to the website. However, it was later confirmed that the website was under DDoS attack. 

DDoS or distributed denial-of-service attack is a form of cyber attack in which the perpetrator aims to disrupt and render a machine or network services on the Internet. This is usually done by flooding the target’s resource with redundant requests to overload the system.

Also on the same day, the East Luwu Police accused the collective of spreading fake news.

Responding to the attack, Project Multatuli decided that it would give permission to other media to reupload the article. From this, a solidarity movement among Indonesian journalists peaked. On 7 October, all types of online media, both the mainstream and independent, began to reupload the article on their platforms.

At the same time, #PercumaLaporPolisi organically grew as a trending hashtag as people from all over the country shared their unsavoury experience with the police. A number of accounts that showed support for Project Multatuli also received a private message from the East Luwu Police titled “Klarifikasi” (clarification). In the message, the police exposed the full name of the whistleblower.

Anonymous accounts on 8 October began to pop up and accuse Project Multatuli for false reporting and defaming the police. The victims’ visum et repertum and personal data began to leak and were widely spread on Instagram as well. 

Following this series of event, #PolriSesuaiProsedur on became a trending hashtag.