14 DAY TRIAL // A contract worker of the Israeli Ministry of Labor and Welfare allegedly stole the personal information of 9 million people from the Population Registry and sold it to a private buyer.
According to The Jerusalem Post, the suspect copied ID numbers, names, addresses and other data that was then utilized to create an application called Argon 2006.
This piece of software allowed the information to be further sold based on certain parameters. Queries could be drawn up and particular individuals could remain exposed, such a tool representing gold for shady marketers, identity thieves and hackers.
The enormous quantity of data contained info on minors and even deceased people and their familial relations. The database later ended up on the Internet along with a detailed website that precisely described the proper way of using the software.
A statement released by the Justice Ministry revealed that the computer technician went through a lot of trouble in trying to mask his tracks by deploying various methods and by performing all the process from different computers.
It seems it's not the first time when sensitive data belonging to the entire population of a state was leaked. As the Office of Inadequate Security mentions, in 2009 a similar incident occurred when a laptop containing birth certificate information for the entire country of Belize was stolen from a government employee's car.
This comes to outline the many risks involved in the digitization of data systems. Of course, back in the day, when everything was recorded on paper, there was not much to do with the private information of an individual.
Now, in the digital era, when knowledge is everything, such a vast database can easily result in identity theft, emptied bank accounts and ruined lives. The worst part of it is that in these situations there's nothing we can really do about it except to keep a close eye on all our digital assets.