‘Unbelievable’ – Israeli Army Suffered Online Security Breach, Over 2,000 Files Exposed

NEWS

Edited image published by Haaretz, originally sourced from the Israeli army.

Even though it could be found through a simple Google search, the documents were only taken offline six days after the newspaper alerted the army to the leak.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has revealed one of the most serious security breaches suffered by the Israeli military in recent years, after it was discovered that thousands of classified military documents were publicly accessible online, including full names of pilots involved in an airstrike on the occupied West Bank City of Jenin, as well as information on Israel’s cyber target of Iran.

The documents, some classified as “life-threatening,” according to the report, were “stored unsecured in a public online folder of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, easily discoverable via a simple Google search.”

Even though it could be found through a simple Google search, the documents were only taken offline six days after the newspaper alerted the army to the leak, the report stated.

Sensitive, Classified Information

It noted that Google “even indexed” some of the documents, meaning that anyone anywhere in the world could access and download the documents with the least bit of technical knowledge.

Some “2,590 PDF files” were stored on the server, some containing sensitive and classified information. The full names of active-duty, reserve, and career officers and soldiers could be found, as well as the full names of air force pilots involved in a Jenin strike, internal Israeli army spokesperson reports, as well as “information on various bases and facilities appeared without any redaction or censorship.”

According to the Haaretz report, the breach stemmed from the military Spokesperson’s Unit’s use of a backup and distribution system provided by a commercial company, which allows for the sharing of documents via electronic links.

In recent years, the unit used these links to send data and statements to journalists. However, the problem was that every document uploaded to the system automatically became available via a publicly accessible, easily guessed link, without users realizing that this also included classified material that was not meant to be disclosed.

The failure was twofold, Haaretz stated, adding,

“Users of the system didn’t understand the implications of uploading documents to it, and the documents were easy to discover since they weren’t stored under complex filenames or protected by adequate security measures.”

Breach Exposed Online

The newspaper was alerted to the breach by researcher Or Fialkov, who specializes in studying Israel’s wars and terrorism and manages social media channels followed by tens of thousands. One of his followers alerted him to the breach.

“With a simple Google search, I managed to find hundreds of indexed documents,” Fialkov said. “I realized this was a systemic practice, not an isolated mistake.”

Despite the army being officially notified of the seriousness of the leak, what happened was “unbelievable,” according to the newspaper. It said that after alerting the Spokesperson’s Unit and explaining the gravity of the exposure, the initial response was not that of an emergency.

An immediate response was only received after the writer of the article “published a general call for help on social media, noting that sensitive documents were exposed online without specifying any details.”

In response, the report stated, “the newspaper received a phone call from the military censor, demanding that the call for help be removed immediately, citing it as ‘life-threatening information.’”

Haaretz confirmed that this was not the first time it had uncovered similar leaks within the Israeli army Spokesperson’s Unit.

For its part, the company operating the system denied a security breach, reportedly claiming that external access was limited to publicly open areas, “and we have no control over the information clients choose to make public.”

‘Sensitive Security Information’

According to an Al-Jazeera Arabic report, this was not the first time Haaretz had exposed a leak of classified Israeli military documents. In November 2021, the newspaper revealed hundreds of highly classified Israeli documents on an Israeli government website due to an error by Israeli officers, the report said.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Mubasher, Palestinian security and military analyst Major General Wasef Erekat described the leak of classified Israeli documents as a scandal for Israeli security and intelligence agencies, especially when the error is corrected by a newspaper.

“The documents contain numerous names, numbers, and addresses of officers and officials, thus holding a great deal of sensitive security information for Israel,” he reportedly stated. “This information could potentially be used by international or Palestinian intelligence agencies to understand how the Israelis think, plan, and execute operations.”

(PC, AJA)