‘Hackers can impersonate, steal soldiers’ identities’

Comptroller: Water, transportation sectors at risk

The IDF’s cyber protection of certain databases for personal identification and health information of its soldiers is significantly deficient and hackers could penetrate it in order to steal identities and impersonate IDF personnel, the State Comptroller’s report said on Tuesday.

Matanyahu Englman’s latest incursion into cyber defense deficiencies during his term focuses on the IDF, as well as the transportation, water, education, tax and business sectors.

“There are serious gaps in the cyber security defense of biometric IDF data,” the report said. In “biometric data for dead soldiers, there is a risk that hackers could use such data to impersonate [IDF soldiers] and steal identities.”

More specifically, Englman wrote that 95% of the x-ray photos of soldiers’ oral cavities are contained in insecure

databases. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers’ fingerprints are also currently held in hackable databases.

Next, the report said that the IDF has not updated its cyber defense protocols for these databases in seven years.

Moreover, the IDF’s rules regarding privacy have not been updated since 1996 despite massive changes to the world in that area and in related technologies.

Across the various databases, the report detailed a variety of other problems relating to missile defense data, disaster management data, other security data and the efficiency of service in providing data

to actual authorized IDF personnel.

According to the report, the military also has no official responsible for the related cyber security issues. Englman also had issues with physical security at the places where the physical stations holding the databases are kept.

Moreover, the IDF has not studied the issue of whether its database would be usable at a sufficient speed to identify soldiers as part of a mass casualty event.

Overall, the thrust of the IDF section of the report was that while traditional hard cyber targets like weapons systems and communications may be better protected, the IDF’s databases with personal information have been neglected.

Regarding the water sector, the report said that many water suppliers were given extremely low scores for their cyber defense readiness.

In April 2020, Iran managed to hack a portion of Israel’s water sector and almost succeeded in releasing dangerous levels of chlorine into that portion of the country’s water supply.

Although the hack was only partially successful and was blocked before a national disaster occurred, it set off a new level of attention to Israel’s “softer” cyber targets beyond the national security establishment.

The comptroller recommended on Tuesday that the government impose an obligation on water suppliers to meet certain cyber defense standards.

Next, the report slammed 21 out of 35 transportation sector bodies for failing to work properly with cyber defense authorities.

The impact of this deficiency is exacerbated by the fact that six out of 30 cyber bodies are considered critical infrastructure for the country, breaking down into a byzantine maze of 28,000 smaller bodies.

In the education sector, the report said that key databases’ vulnerability to hacking could undermine public faith in key exams of graduating high school students reviewed by universities.

This could also lead to cheating or other abuses of the exam process.

In fact, the report said that the designer of the system the Education Ministry is currently using had already stopped vouching for its defensibility in 2019.

Only five out of 50 databases are properly defended.

Further, the report said that around 4,000 outside contractors had access to aspects of the grades, who access the system from insecure home computers that could also lead to hacking the broader system.

Many areas of the education sector have not designated cyber defender officials who are responsible for their digital defense, said the report.

According to Englman, the Education Ministry has failed to carry out disaster drills in preparation for a mega cyber hacking event.

The IDF responded to the report saying that it had accepted most of the recommendations and was starting to implement them.

Despite this, it did emphasize that the data discussed by the comptroller is held within protected databases which are not exposed to the public.

In addition, the IDF said that though it has physical security for all of the physical locations of its databases, it is exploring adding an increased level of security.

The military said that it would soon update its cyber and privacy protocols, along with committing to future updates every few years.

ICC

the probe since taking office in June 2021.

Even multiple public filings by Khan to the Assembly of State Parties contained scant references to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a statement, Al Jazeera said that it came to the decision to file the complaint after forming an “international legal coalition that consists of [Al Jazeera]’s legal team along with international legal experts.”

A video released by Al Jazeera on Tuesday included interviews with several of Abu Akleh’s journalist colleagues who were with her when she was killed.

It depicts her arrival at the scene, some discussions she had with her colleagues when the scene was calm, shows how the scene transformed without warning into a kill zone despite the absence of Palestinian gunmen in the immediate vicinity, and Abu Akleh’s last words, “Ali has been shot” after one of her colleagues was shot, though not mortally wounded.

The video footage also has an interview with her niece after the incident.

While the footage does not portray the full circumstances of the incident, including shooting at the IDF which the IDF has said it responded to in a chaotic and uncertain atmosphere, it certainly supports efforts to tarnish the IDF’s name in the incident.

The complaint is primarily about the killing of Abu Akleh, but will also reference the bombing of the Al Jazeera office in Gaza during Operation Guardian of the Walls in May of 2021.

No one was killed in that attack and Israel presented intelligence that a special Hamas unit was illegally using the civilian building to shield itself, but the IDF was condemned globally, including by many of its usual Western allies.

A forensic investigation of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh was inconclusive, but several investigations conducted by multiple media organizations and independently by the IDF concluded that it was most likely a misfire by one of the IDF soldiers during the raid.

The Palestinian Authority was asked to conduct a joint investigation with Israel, but refused and has insisted, without specific evidence, that the killing was an intentional targeting of the journalist.

Last month, the FBI opened an investigation into the incident, a move that angered Israeli officials who argued that this set a highly problematic precedent for second-guessing a democratic country’s independent legal system.

There were also concerns that the FBI probe might bolster the general ICC probe against Israelis, although that remains to be seen.

Al Jazeera vowed “to follow every path to achieve justice for Shireen, and ensure those responsible for her killing are brought to justice and held accountable in all international justice and legal platforms and courts.”

Prime Minister Yair Lapid said that “no one will investigate IDF soldiers and no one will lecture us about morals in wartime, especially not Al Jazeera.”

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that Abu Akleh’s death was “a clear wartime event that was investigated in the deepest and most thorough way.

“I suggest that...Al Jazeera first check what is happening to journalists in Iran and other countries in the area in which Al Jazeera is active,” Gantz added, during a conference on education in the Knesset. “There is no army that acts as morally in wartime as the IDF and I want to emphasize my and the entire system’s full backing for the commanders and soldiers who defend the citizens of Israel.”

Israel does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC because it argues there is no “State of Palestine” to refer the file to the ICC in the first place, something the ICC pre-trial tribunal has resolved in favor of the Palestinians.

Still, the ICC cannot proceed against anyone if the country hosting the suspects in question has carried out its own independent investigations.

Though critics argue Israel is too lenient with its own soldiers, a number of soldiers have been sentenced to prison time over the years for killing Palestinians.

The tense situation comes as controversial Otzma Yehudit MK Itamar Ben-Gvir is poised to take control of the Israeli Border Police, and to loosen open-fire regulations.

Lahav Harkov, Jerusalem Post Staff and Reuters contributed to this story. •