Iraqi disputed election faces a new challenge following the infiltration of servers by a group of Israeli hackers. The new development further reinforces the theory of election hack in Iraqi society who reject the results.
More than 9.6 million Iraqi voters find their personal information exposed following participation in recent local parliamentary elections. The hackers, apparently originating from Israel, succeeded in infiltrating the UAE servers of the elections.
According the Raidforums, a hacker team infiltrated the Dark Matter servers to get access to the data of the voters in Iraqi elections. Dark Matter, the Emirati Cybersecurity company, was obliged with providing digital security assistance during the October 10 elections in Iraq.
Raidforums says the data would be handed over to any third party who pays 2 Bitcoins, more than $130,000. The election hack team provided a Telegram contact ID for more correspondence.
“Today I have uploaded the info of the voters of the Iraqi election for you to download. 9.672m records that consist of the names of the voters, ID numbers, DoBs, Phone numbers, site of voting and gender,” Raidforums posted on website. ” The information was obtained through an API bug in the Dark Matter’s servers,” the website further noticed.
Raidforums is a leak market through which hacker teams and similar group provide and trade the leaked data. The website provided a picture of a list of more than 20 names, seemingly from Basra, Iraqi city, who participated in the election.
The new information reveals the deep access of Emirati authorities to the election data. The issue further reinforces the fraud theories currently circulating in Iraqi society.
The hacker team seems to be from Israel as the number of Telegram account reveals. UAE and Israel’s security partnership complicates the issue even further leading to more credibility for election hack.
Election Hack; Iraq, UAE, and Israel
Following the recent parliamentary election in Iraq, multiple group challenged the results referring to its discrepancy with per-election polls. The disputes led to massive disputes in recent days, with protesters believing the foreign parties intervened in electoral process.
The protesters, nevertheless, provided no credible document or evidence to support their claim. They only called for recounting of the ballots saying the electronic process was subject to infiltration.
The Raidforums election hack data shows that the disputes may be far from mere conspiracy theories. The deep level of access by Emirati cybersecurity company to the election process will exacerbate the distrust with the recent election results.
Following normalization of ties between UAE and Israel, the two countries launched security partnership on multiple sectors. The two countries also signed cybersecurity deals in the past months.
SuperCom, an Israeli monitoring and cyber security company, is in charge of electronic tracking of participants at the Dubai Expo. Israel’s potential infiltration in Iraqi election through UAE might have been a decisive factor in the results.
Be election hack or not, the recent data leak shows the security fragility of Iraqi electoral system. Besides, and more importantly, relying the main democratic process of the country on a foreign company could be a serious strategic fault.
Iraqi administration suffered political and strategic miscalculation trusting the electronic security of the election process with an Emirati company. En route, they made mess out of a democratic process that could retain order back to Iraqi society.
The new data may lead to more tension in Iraqi society, already rejecting the election results and mistrusting the administration. A potential intervention of Israeli factors in the election might further complicate the condition. Government authorities are yet to respond to the new developments.
