Thousands of ATMs Go Down in Indonesia After Satellite Problems (reuters.com)

Thousands of ATMs and electronic card payment machines in Indonesia went offline over the weekend, and it might take two more weeks before full service is restored, after an outage from a satellite belonging to state-controlled telecom giant PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom). From a report: Around 15,000 ground sites across Indonesia were affected by the problem on the 'Telkom-1' satellite, whose service is used by government agencies, banks, broadcasters and other corporations, Telkom's president director Alex Sinaga told reporters on Monday. A shift in the direction of the satelliteâ(TM)s antenna, which was first detected last Friday, had disrupted connectivity. Bank Central Asia (BCA), Indonesia's largest bank by market value, had around 5,700 of its ATMs affected by the outage, or 30 percent of the total operated by the bank, BCA chief executive Jahja Setiaatmadja told reporters. The Internet connection in some remote BCA branches were also affected, he said.

Comments

Imagine war against a major power

[Oswald McWeany]

Imagine war against China or Russia, or another major player. One major cyber attack or satellites taken out (or commandeered for alternate purposes by the military).

This could be us. ATMs stop working, Credit card machines stop validating. Fewer deaths and injuries, but perhaps financially more destabilizing for the majority of citizens than getting bombed during WWII was. ... of course we will get bombed too...and probably with nukes... but even the cyber, modern day tech side of things will be very disruptive to modern society. Imagine if no one had access to any money in the west for weeks- in a society that doesn't carry cash anymore. Looting, riots, theft, etc... all would skyrocket.

Re:Imagine war against a major power

[captaindomon]

Civilization is three square meals from anarchy. Always sobering to remember. And it's true - if you have kids, and they don't have food to eat, how long do you think you would maintain the status quo, before trying to find some way to feed them?