Indonesian election website gets comedy makeover

Pink Grandfather Party

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

Posted in Enterprise Security, 21st April 2004 09:06 GMT

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The official election website for this month's Indonesian elections became the scene of a tropical farce this weekend when hackers changed official party names to comical variants.

The monikers of the top three parties remained unaltered but the fourth-placed United Development Party was rechristened the "Pink Grandfather Party", while the fifth placed Democrats' Party was renamed "the Party of Bottled Mineral Water", CNet Asia reports. Thirteen other parties also suffered the ignominy of being given farcical handles.

The Indonesian General Elections Commission (KPU) has admitted its official website, which gives an online tally on the progress on the count in Indonesia's 5 April elections was defaced on Saturday evening. The security breach, which resulted in dodgy data been displayed for four hours, has raised questions about the credibility of the KPU, the Jakarta Post reports. This seems a little harsh especially when we consider that an attempt by hackers to access the back-end system behind the website failed, according to reports. ®