Chinese Electric Cars in Israel Found to Be Transmitting Data to China

The Israeli Ministry of Defense has officially suspended the supply of Chinese electric vehicles from BYD to IDF officers due to concerns over data collection via embedded communication systems and sensors.

Ynetnews reported on this.

The ban came after numerous warnings from cybersecurity experts, who emphasized that Chinese vehicles could be used as tools for espionage.

Earlier, the Israeli Ministry of Defense had already received over 600 Chinese vehicles, including the MG ZS EV and Chery Tiggo 8 models, which were actively used as official transport for officers, even near the Ministry of Defense headquarters in Tel Aviv.

However, the new BYD Atto 3 electric cars, which were planned to be assigned to IDF lieutenant colonels, were not put into operation after their electronics were checked.

To minimize the risk of information leakage, the e-Call system — the automatic emergency services communication feature — was forcibly disabled in the received vehicles.

However, experts believe that this is not enough. Dr. Harel Menashri, one of the founders of the cybersecurity department at the Israel Security Agency (Shabak), pointed out that Chinese cars should be considered mobile intelligence platforms capable of collecting audio, video, geolocation, and biometric data, and transmitting it to servers in China.

Militarnyi previously reported that China is becoming an increasingly serious threat to Poland’s cybersecurity due to attacks on infrastructure and government institutions.