Agron 2020 - Ex-Mossad chief says Likud app leaks as dangerous to Israel as coronavirus
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| Former Mossad director Tamir Pardo participates in the Meir Dagan Conference for Strategy and Defense at the Netanya Academic College, March 21, 2018. (Meir Vaaknin/Flash90) |
After series of dramatic data mishaps in software used in Netanyahu’s campaign, Tamir Pardo says it poses ‘real security threat,’ endangers IDF, Shin Bet, Mossad members
A former head of the Mossad spy agency sounded the alarm Wednesday about an app operated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party ahead of next week’s elections, warning that using it was “a real security threat” and likening the level of danger it poses to that of the deadly coronavirus.
Twice in two weeks, Likud’s online voter-tracking efforts have resulted in leaks of the entire database of Israeli voters, including names, home addresses and other details, to the wider internet.
The first breach earlier this month was one of the largest and most compromising leaks of Israelis’ personal information in the nation’s history, leading to the party being investigated by authorities for possible violations of election privacy laws.
The second leak, reported on Sunday, was caused by faulty data protection on a website and app, called Elector, belonging to Likud that the party used to register and assign its election-day observers to ballot stations around the country.
“This app is dangerous to the security of the State of Israel, to the safety of IDF soldiers and commanders and members of the Shin Bet and the Mossad,” said former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo in an interview with internet expert Dr. Anat Ben-David published on social media.
Ben-David researched Elector and warned the Central Elections Committee of the security and privacy issues it posed.
Pardo continued: “Our friend in Hezbollah sitting in Beirut can [download the app]. So can the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps operative sitting in Tehran, and so can the Hamas member in Gaza and in Nablus. They can search any person living in Israel, see who their family members are and search them in the voter registry.
“If they know the name of an IDF commander or a member of the Shin Bet or the Mossad, and someone has filled in their phone number, they can see that. Anyone using the app is endangering the safety of Israel’s security officials,” he warned.
“This is the security ‘coronavirus’ of Israel,” Pardo declared, urging Israelis to “delete the app and not add anything to it.”
Elector spokesman Yaron David responded by calling Pardo’s remarks “a savage and irresponsible tongue-lashing against the most secure and monitored election app currently around, and all based on false information that he doubtless hasn’t examined.”
Calling the remark part of “an orchestrated campaign motivated by a political agenda,” David said all the petitions against Elector had been rejected and that it is accessible only from Israel, restricts searches and takes other precautions.
He said it was Pardo’s comments that were the “coronavirus of our internal resilience system.”
There has been no immediate evidence that the exposed information was downloaded by foreign actors before the vulnerability was discovered.
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