The World Food Programme said a breach of its self-registration system exposed personal details belonging to about 600,000 Gazan households receiving aid, including names, ID numbers, phone numbers and location information.
KEY FACTS
- Incident a security issue affected the self-registration application used by Gazans to register for aid
- Data exposed names, ID numbers, phone numbers and location information were among the details accessed
- Scale the organization said the breach involved roughly 600,000 households
- Status the registration platform was suspended while security improvements were applied
The disclosure said the incident was first detected on May 14 and that the platform was taken offline to address the problem. The report also said an outside expert had warned the Palestine team about vulnerabilities two days earlier.
In a Telegram update on May 31, the agency said the breach affected a system used for self-registration and said the program was treating the matter with urgency. It later said on June 2 that the platform was still down.
A news report from The New Humanitarian first described the incident, and the organization said aid recipients did not need to take any action. Registration remained valid, and food assistance, cash assistance, nutritional supplementation and other programs were continuing.
The agency did not immediately respond to questions from The Register. It said it supports 1.6 million Palestinians each month as the territory faces severe food shortages and widespread unemployment.
WHY IT MATTERS
The incident involves sensitive personal data tied to aid delivery in a conflict zone where many people rely on humanitarian support. The platform outage may limit registration in the short term, but the agency says assistance is still being delivered.