By Amit Acco, Partner |
According to Israel Hayom, IDF’s Civil Administration computers have been hacked last week. This system issues entry and work permits for Palestinian and dispensed thousands of unauthorized yet perfectly passable permits.
It is suspected that criminals who are scalping work permits to PA Arab day laborers have broken into the IDF system, identified files of contractors who do not employ workers from the Palestinian Authority, and illegally registered hundreds of workers in the names of these employers. This allowed them to scalp those work permits, offering Palestinian workers a way to enter Israel illegally.
The suspicion arose among contractors after they had recently received notifications from the Population and Immigration Authority that they were late in turning in the information needed to create payslips for their PA workers.
By law, the Population Authority issues the payslips and not the employer. After an investigation, it turned out the contractors in question had long since stopped employing PA Arab workers.
The CEO of the Contractors Association, Gabi Portnoy:
“This is the third hacking known to us over a few months, and it has the potential to damage the security of the state and involves serious criminal offenses.”
