A website used by millions of Dutch voters to test their political preferences was quietly keeping a tally of how many were matched with each party, a security researcher who penetrated the site said on Tuesday. The discovery by researcher Loran Kloeze raised potential privacy concerns and sparked a debate over whether the site was biased. The leaked results showed the Labour Party, a junior party in the governing coalition, received the second most matches even though it is running sixth in opinion polls. Kloeze said he had also found a rogue data field on the site in which someone had posted an insult, suggesting he was not the only person to have discovered a flaw in its security. The leak comes at a time of heightened concern over cyber security after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia used cyberattacks last year to try to sway the outcome of the Nov. 8 election in favor of Donald Trump.
The Dutch government last week decided that all votes in the Netherlands’ March 15 election would be hand-counted, after the intelligence agency warned foreign governments could attempt to influence elections by hacking computer systems.
The “StemWijzer” or “voting compass” site asks potential voters 30 questions and then tells them which party best matches their opinions. An estimated 5 million Dutch took a similar test before the 2012 election, out of a population of 17 million.
Kloeze told Reuters: “They’re keeping a record of all the results. I’m certainly not saying that they are linking them to (users’) IP addresses, I simply have no idea. But if I can find this kind of vulnerability, and there are others, then confidence in the site is undermined.”
Full Article: Leak raises security concerns over Dutch voter help website | Reuters.
