Senior Indonesian officials ‘targeted by spyware’

More than a dozen senior Indonesian government and military officials were targeted last year with spy software designed by an Israeli surveillance firm, according to nine people with knowledge of the matter.

Six of the individuals told Reuters they were targeted themselves.

The targets included chief economic minister Airlangga Hartarto, senior military personnel, two regional diplomats, and advisers in Indonesia’s defence and foreign affairs ministries, according to the sources.

Six of the Indonesian officials and advisers targeted told Reuters they received an email message from Apple in November 2021 telling them that Apple believed officials were being “targeted by state-sponsored attackers”.

Apple has not disclosed the identities or number of users targeted. The company declined to comment for this story.

Apple and security researchers have said the recipients of the warnings were targeted using ForcedEntry, an advanced piece of software that has been used by Israeli cyber surveillance vendor NSO Group to help foreign spy agencies remotely and invisibly take control of iPhones.

Another Israeli cyber firm, QuaDream, has developed a nearly identical hacking tool.

Reuters was unable to determine who made or used the spyware to target the Indonesian officials, whether the attempts were successful, and, if so, what the hackers might have obtained.

The attempt to target Indonesian officials is one of the biggest cases yet seen of the software being used against government, military and defence ministry personnel, according to cybersecurity experts.

The Indonesian government, military, defence ministry and the Indonesian Cyber and Crypto Agency (BSSN) did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for the foreign affairs ministry said it was unaware of the case and referred questions to BSSN.

Alia Karenina, a spokesperson for Airlangga’s ministry, said the minister, a top ally of Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo, did not receive any notification from Apple about the attempted hack on his official email account.

She said the minister has not installed his official email on his personal phone and used multiple mobile devices.

The use of ForcedEntry, which exploits a flaw in iPhones through a new hacking technique that requires no user interactions, was made public by cybersecurity watchdog Citizen Lab in September 2021.

Google security researchers described it in December as the “most technically sophisticated” hacking attack they had seen.

Apple patched the vulnerability in September last year and in November started sending notification messages to what it called a “small number of users that it discovered may have been targeted”.

An NSO spokesperson denied the company’s software was involved in the targeting of Indonesian officials, dismissing it as “contractually and technologically impossible”, without specifying why.

The company, which does not disclose the identity of its customers, says it sells its products only to “vetted and legitimate” government entities.

QuaDream did not respond to requests for comment. In addition to the six officials and advisers who told Reuters they were targeted, a director at a state-owned Indonesian firm that provides weapons to the Indonesian army got the same message from Apple, according to two sources.