CPJ Condemns DDoS Attack Targeting Tempo

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has condemned the distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyberattack on Tempo media. The attack began on June 5, 2026, and flooded Tempo's servers with fake internet traffic, disrupting public access to the main tempo.co website.

The Director for Asia-Pacific at CPJ, Beh Lih Yi, has called this cyberattack a cowardly attempt to silence Tempo on reporting alleged corruption cases. She emphasized that this cyberattack will not stop Tempo from exposing the violations that occurred. Beh stated, "The perpetrators behind this large-scale and organized campaign of intimidation should be ashamed of themselves," as quoted from CPJAsia's X account on Thursday, June 11, 2026.

The Tempo news portal's server has been under a DDoS attack since Friday, June 5, 2026. Tempo Digital's Chief Technology Officer, Heru Tjatur Tjahja, stated that the attacks of the past few days have been massive. As of Monday, June 8, 2026, Tempo's technology team recorded a total of 24.9 million requests directed at their servers.

According to him, this DDoS cyberattack used bots to send a very large amount of internet traffic to the site's servers. Based on Tempo's technology team's analysis, the attack pattern occurred sporadically with high intensity at certain times.

Tjatur mentioned that attackers tend to carry out their attacks at night and into the early morning hours. One of the largest waves of attacks occurred between 8:30 PM and midnight, with a total of 12.97 million attacks in two hours.

"The first intensity was 12.97 million attacks within two hours. The digital attacks took place from 8:30 PM until midnight," he stated on Monday, June 8, 2026.

Preliminary analysis indicates that the attacks are not only coming from Indonesia. Tempo's technology team identified traces of attacks from several countries, including Colombia, the United States, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Mexico.

He suspected that the DDoS attack is a continuation of the hacking attempts that previously targeted Tempo's content management system (CMS) at the end of last May. In that incident, hackers canceled the publication of several articles that had been published, making them inaccessible on the internet.

According to Tjatur, the targeted articles were related to online gambling news and corruption cases, one of which is the customs corruption being investigated by the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).

However, the design of Tempo's CMS system limits user authority, so hackers cannot permanently delete articles and can only unpublish them. The editorial team has republished dozens of hacked articles, making them accessible to the public again. "Those who are attacking seem unhappy, which led them to carry out the digital DDoS attacks," he said.

Novali Panji Nugroho contributed to the writing of this article

Read: Tempo Hit by 24.9 Million Cyberattacks After Corruption Reports

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