Data Breach Exposes Millions of Israeli Voters Via App
According to a cybersecurity expert, Israeli’s ruling conservative party has found a security breach in an app that has potentially exposed the personal non-public information of nearly 6.5 million Israeli citizens.
The app in question is used for managing campaigns by the Likud party, which is headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The news of the breach became public just weeks before a scheduled vote, which makes the third time Israeli citizens have gone to the polls this year.
Netanyahu is seeking consecutive fourth term reelection.
In a statement by the Likud party, they only acknowledged that they had overcome an attempt to damage the platform of the app used, but the party did not respond to the inquiries of a serious data breach. This could be due to the fact that a breach of this nature embarrasses the party after the smear campaign that they launched against Netanyahu’s main opponent stating that the man had been hacked by Iranian intelligence.
The breach is believed to have compromised information such as names, addresses, polling stations, and ID numbers of the Israeli citizens who are eligible to vote. It is also possible that the phone numbers, gender, and if they were Likud voters.
The breach was exposed because of faulty security in the app created by Feedback for the Likud Party called Elector. Neither Feedback nor Elector’s designer Tzur Yamin responded to the press’s inquiries for comment.
An Israeli security researcher first told of the breach on a podcast, stating he was informed by an anonymous hacker, which was confirmed independently to be reliable information.
The Israeli political parties gain access to the voter’s personal information prior to an election from the Central Elections Committee for campaign processes, but that is only released under the condition that the parties agree to keep the information confidential.
