Likud election app exposes personal information of over six million voters
Major security breach exposed by developer after the party had uploaded the full elections registry to the application
A security breach in an Election Day app used by the Likud party has exposed the personal information of over 6 million Israeli voters.
The leak in the Elector app was discovered by Ran Bar-Zik, an Israeli-born developer for Verizon Media. ZDNet, a business technology news website, first reported the leak on Monday.
Zik wrote about the security breach in a blog post.
Likud had uploaded the full Central Elections Committee voter registry to the app, Haaretz reported, but a flaw allowed anyone access to the entire database, from which they could copy the entire Israeli voter registry, along with additional information collected by Likud.
The registry contains the full names, national identity card numbers, addresses and gender of every eligible voter in Israel, and the Likud list also contained the phone numbers and other personal details of some voters. The extra personal details come from party supporters who downloaded the app and provided the information to the database.
Security measures have since been boosted, Haaretz reported, citing Feed-b, the company that developed the app.
Israeli political parties receive voter details before the elections. The parties must agree to keep the information secure, as well not to provide the information to a third party and to permanently erase the information after the election.
Likud has not publicly commented on the breach.
It is not known if or how many people may have downloaded the information.
Israel’s national elections, the third in less than a year, will be held on March 2.
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