Massive DDoS Attack Takes the Investigative Journalism Website Armando.info Offline (March 2019)
The Venezuelan investigative journalism website Armando.info suffered a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that rendered it virtually inaccessible. On March 3, 2019, co-founder and co-editor Ewald Scharfenberg reported via Twitter that, since March 2, the site had been under a “massive cyberattack” that prevented it from staying online, forcing the outlet to publish its content through Facebook and partner outlets such as La Patilla. According to IPYS Venezuela’s annual digital rights report (reproduced by El Nacional), attacks on the Armando.info server had been recorded since February 2019; the most intense episode occurred on March 2, beginning at 9 p.m. on Saturday and lasting all night until Sunday morning, directed primarily from Russia and reaching up to 9 million requests to the server in a single hour. The attack is part of a coordinated offensive against independent Venezuelan media outlets: on March 4, the websites Efecto Cocuyo, El Pitazo, and El Cooperante were also taken offline by attacks on their servers (confirmed by IPYS Venezuela, Venezuela Sin Filtro, and NetBlocks), alongside blocks of Twitter and SoundCloud by CANTV. Armando.info had been a recurring target of cyberattacks after exposing corruption in the state-run CLAP food program and conducting other investigations.
Impact details
Armando.info became inaccessible due to a massive DDoS attack that began on March 2, 2019; IPYS reported up to 9 million requests in one hour. No data breach has been reported.
Classification & severity
- Category
- Availability
- Subtype
- Distributed denial of service
- Confidence
- High
Public disclosure documents indicate that the DDoS traffic prevents readers from accessing the site normally, although no data has been compromised.
Severity assessment
Medium- Functional impact
- Denial (non-critical)
- Information impact
- None
- Affected scope
- Organization-wide
- Critical service
- None
- Public confidence
- Limited
- Recoverability
- Regular
Impact on availability/censorship versus media. No public evidence of data compromise or critical service interruption.
Timeline
IPYS Venezuela has documented attacks on the Armando.info server since February 2019.
Most intense DDoS episode: began at 9 p.m. on Saturday, March 2, and lasted all night, with up to 9 million requests per hour originating primarily from Russia; the site went offline.
Ewald Scharfenberg publicly denounces the “massive cyberattack” on Twitter and announces that content will be shared via Facebook and La Patilla.
Coordinated attack: Efecto Cocuyo, El Pitazo, and El Cooperante go offline for ~2 hours due to attacks on their servers; CANTV blocks Twitter and SoundCloud (confirmed by IPYS, Venezuela Sin Filtro, and NetBlocks).
IPYS Venezuela’s 2019 annual digital rights report provides a technical breakdown of the attack (originating in Russia, 9 million requests per hour), as reported by El Nacional.