Indonesia's tax agency probes alleged personal data breach

JAKARTA (Reuters) -Indonesia's tax agency is investigating an alleged data breach that exposed the taxpayer identification numbers of millions of Indonesians, including President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, his ministers and his two sons, an official said.

A series of cyber-attacks have hit Indonesian companies and government agencies in the past few years, which experts attribute to the government's lax protection on personal data.

Teguh Aprianto, a cybersecurity expert, posted a screenshot on social media platform X on Wednesday containing the samples of national identity and taxpayer identification numbers of 6 million Indonesians, including Jokowi's and some of his ministers.

The tax agency is looking into the "circulating information of a data breach," Dwi Astuti, an official with the agency said late on Wednesday without providing details.

Reuters could not immediately confirm the legitimacy of the data breach. Jokowi said on Thursday that data breaches also happen in other countries and urged the relevant ministries to mitigate the problems imminently, state news Antara reported.

Teguh told Reuters exposing taxpayer data could attract targeted attacks from scam operations, which "could result in material or immaterial loss," adding it could also expose people's earnings or transactions data.

The alleged breach follows a ransomware attack in June that paralysed several government services such as immigration and operations at major airports, prompting the government to conduct an audit.

(Reporting by Ananda Teresia and Stanley Widianto; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Tommasz Janowski)

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