Netanyahu’s party Elector app exposes data on over 6.5M Israelis

A misconfiguration in the Elector election day app developed by Likud, the Netanyahu’s party might have exposed data on over 6.5 million Israelis.

A misconfiguration in an election day app developed by the Netanyahu’s party Likud, might have exposed personal details of over 6.5 million Israelis.

The incident was reported by the Verizon Media developer Ran Bar-Zik, and Israeli media ([1], [2], [3], [4]) confirmed the data leak.

Bar-Zik explained that he discovered the huge trove of data while was performing a security audit of the Elector app developed by Elector Software for Likud, the Israeli political party led prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Netanyahu is actually sending Likud activists into a serious security breach, one of the most serious that has been exposed in recent years in Israel.” reads the post published by Calcalist. “Because a major security failure in Elector’s app and system revealed all the Likud’s voter data ahead of the upcoming elections: a huge database of voters and containing up-to-date personal information – ID, full name, address, and phone – of close to 6.5 million Israelis with voting rights.”

At the time it is not clear if the leaked information was accessed also by unauthorized parties before it was discovered.

Bar-Zik decided to assess the app after privacy critics raised by local media in recent weeks.

The Likud app was designed to allow the party’s political supporters to sign up for news and updates during the upcoming Israeli election, on March 2.

The party published the app on the elector.co.il website.

The analysis of the source code of the app revealed the presence of a link to an API endpoint that used to authenticate the site’s administrators.

The expert pointed out that the API doesn’t require any authentication to be used to query the application are receive the site’s administrators’s data in cleartext, including their passwords.

Once obtained the credentials, Bar-Zik used them access to the site’s backend, including a database that contained the personal details of 6,453,254 Israeli citizens.

The database was an official and up to date copy of Israel’s voter registration database, which each managed by any party before the election.

“The information includes the ID number, full name, full address, father’s name, ballot and voting address and voter ID – information that actually identifies all the senior citizens of Israel. This information was particularly up-to-date and comprehensive.” continues the post. “Bar Zick himself said that following an apartment move, he updated his address in the Interior Ministry just three weeks ago. His latest address appeared in the uncovered database.”

The records in the database included personal details such as full name, phone number, ID card numbers, home addresses, gender, age, and political preferences.

Following the discovery of the data leak, the official website of the Elector app has been taken down.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – Elector app, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.