Thread by @privacyint

[TREAD ALERT!] Right, folks it's time for your all-too-regular thread about the latest breach that has affected millions of people.
Today, we'll take a look at what's been happening in Israel. 🇮🇱

Last night, @barzik revealed in Haaretz that the entire voter registry in Israel had been leaked. That means the data of 6.4 million Israelis, including their home address and phone numbers has been up for grabs.
haaretz.com/israel-news/el…

@barzik For the record there are 8 million people living in Israel, so we are talking about basically the entire adult population of the country.

@barzik How did this happen? Because we trusted a political party with unqualified access and use to the voter registry. And once again political parties did not live up to our trust.

@barzik Likud (the party of current Prime Ministry Benjamin Netayahu) uploaded the voter registry on an app, called Elector app, which they use to manage election day.

@barzik The problem is that this app is hugely insecure and allowed basically anyone to download the registry. And while that particular vulnerability has now been patched, there is still a lot that is wrong (i.e not secure at all) about Elector app.

@barzik We wish we could tell you this was the biggest leak in Israeli history but in the early 2000s the entire civil registry was leaked, revealing similar data about 9 million Israeli citizens, i.e every citizens - dead AND alive. (see media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4652-en… by @yuvadm )

@barzik @yuvadm Tl;dr: political parties need to do a lot better with voter registries. We'll have more to share soon on this, in the context of other countries, but in the meantime check out: privacyinternational.org/campaigns/when…
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