Foreign Country Trying to Interfere in Israeli Election

The Fellowship  |  January 8, 2019

As bad actors across the globe have tried to meddle in democracies’ elections, Israel looks to be their next target. The Jerusalem Post’s Yonah Jeremy Bob reports that Israel’s Shin Bet chief is warning that foreign meddling in the upcoming April elections in Israel is highly probable:

A foreign country is trying to use cyber abilities to interfere in Israel’s upcoming elections, Shin Bet director Nadav Argaman has warned…

Argaman said that he does not yet know the political purpose of the foreign country which is trying to interfere with Israeli elections, but that “it is trying to intervene – and I know what I am talking about…”

Generally, there are two primary threats of cyber interference in an election. One is hacking the actual election infrastructure to alter the vote count, which is still rarer and harder to do. The second, which has become more common and which Russia did in the US, is manipulative, sophisticated social media campaigns promoting fake news stories and themes designed to support a favored candidate…

In recent interviews with The Jerusalem Post, both ex-Israeli cyber chief Buky Carmeli, and former government agent and Chief Technology Officer Amit Meltzer said that even as Russia and China may be using cyber to collect intelligence in Israel, it is doubtful either would provoke a crisis.

In contrast, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has named Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas in the past as all trying to hack various aspects of the country…