DDoS attacks against independent digital media outlets likely carried out by Venezuelan military forces, according to Freedom House
Freedom House’s 2020 Freedom on the Net report documented that several independent digital media outlets in Venezuela were targeted by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks during the period from June 2019 to May 2020, which the organization assessed as likely having been carried out by military forces as a means of censorship. This attribution should be understood as a secondary-source assessment, not as individualized forensic confirmation.
Impact details
Freedom House and media reports describe a trend in 2020 of DDoS attacks against independent media outlets, including the case of El Diario. This campaign-level record reflects the impact on availability and censorship, not data exposure.
Classification & severity
- Category
- Availability
- Subtype
- Distributed denial of service
- Confidence
- Medium
Freedom House describes a pattern of DDoS attacks against independent Venezuelan media outlets in 2020; this is a campaign of unprecedented proportions.
Severity assessment
Medium- Functional impact
- Degraded (non-critical)
- Information impact
- None
- Affected scope
- Sector
- Critical service
- None
- Public confidence
- Limited
Impact on availability/censorship versus media. No public evidence of data compromise or critical service interruption.
Timeline
The El Diario website suffered a DDoS attack lasting approximately three hours, with more than 18 million requests originating from Russia, China, and Nigeria.
Freedom House publishes "Freedom on the Net 2020," documenting that several independent digital media outlets were targeted by DDoS attacks, likely carried out by military forces as a means of censorship.