Ono Instructor Addresses “White-Hat” Hacking of Police’s Emergency Application
The Police’s “100” emergency services application evidently has a lot of the personal data of Israel’s citizens. Ono computer science lecturer Ran Bar-Zik was recently interviewed on Radio Tel Aviv’s “Free Market” program where he discussed a study undertaken by computer scientist Noam Rotem analyzing the police application’s security.
Bar-Zik said that the study uncovered some good news and some bad news. The bad news is that there are “private keys” which give their holders access to the citzens’ data on the police’s servers. The researcher was able to access such a key and with it he was able to view some very sensitive information.
The good news is that Rotem contacted the police with the findings of his research and found them to be very solicitous of his critique. They pored over his discoveries and made immediate corrections that fixed the problems. Bar-Zik was complimentary of the way the police responded to the situation.
The conversation led into a deeper discussion of the differences between “white hat”, “grey hat” and “black hat” hackers.
Bar-Zik, a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science at Ono Academic College, is also a technology columnist for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, a “white-hat” hacker, who exposes internet security vulnerabilities for the purpose of protecting society, a technology blogger and a computer programmer.
The complete interview can be heard starting from 03:00, here:
