MKs warn Israel’s elections agency not protected from cyberattacks

After reported Russian hacking of the Democratic Party in last year’s US election and leaks on the last day of last month’s presidential race in France intended to hurt candidate (and now President) Emmanuel Macron, Israeli lawmakers take up the issue of protecting Israel’s elections infrastructure from the threat of cyberattacks.

MK Uri Maklev (United Torah Judaism), chair of the Knesset’s Science and Technology Committee, which is meeting Monday on the issue, warns that “even if just half or one-third of the suspicions [of election hacking] turn out to be true, and some have already been confirmed, this transforms from an imaginary scenario to a substantive threat.”

Lawmakers hear in Monday’s subcommittee meeting that no cyber defense agency is specifically tasked with protecting the Central Election Committee’s systems from attack. According to the Knesset’s internal research office, in a report presented to MKs at the meeting, the elections agency is not formally defined as a “critical infrastructure,” a designation that usually refers to vital agencies and infrastructures that might be targeted in wartime, and so is not currently protected by any of Israel’s cyber defense units.

MK Anat Berko (Likud), chair of the Knesset’s Subcommittee for Cyber Defense, laments the dearth of cyber defenses for the nation’s elections mechanisms. “Even the mere suspicion that a foreign state interfered in our elections hurts the democratic process,” Berko warns.