Complete outage of the elpitazo.net website and deletion of the news archive from the Contabo hosting provider’s server (November 2025)
The Venezuelan digital media outlet El Pitazo reported that its website, elpitazo.net, had been completely down since Thursday, November 20–21, 2025, and the deletion of its entire journalistic archive—nearly 11 years’ worth of content—stored on the server that hosted it, owned by the German hosting company Contabo, based in Munich. According to a statement from El Pitazo’s board of directors, Contabo notified them that “all the information stored there has been deleted and that they do not know how it happened.” The news outlet tried unsuccessfully to obtain an explanation from the provider: on Saturday, November 22, it sent a letter to Contabo’s executive board, including CEO Stephan Wolfram and Vice President of Finance Mario Wilhelm, requesting an immediate solution, and as of Monday, November 24, it had not received a response. El Pitazo and the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP) did not rule out the possibility that this was an incident linked to an unacknowledged or unreported attack, given the history of blockades and attacks against the media outlet (Conatel had previously ordered the blocking of four of its domains: elpitazo.com, elpitazo.info, elpitazo.ml, and elpitazo.net) and the repeated pressure from reputation management firms to remove or modify content about politically exposed individuals. The exact cause of the deletion (an attack, an error, or a deliberate action by the provider) was not publicly confirmed. The outlet’s team worked urgently to set up a new website and blog on another server, while keeping its social media channels and YouTube channel active.
Impact details
El Pitazo reported a complete outage of elpitazo.net and the loss of nearly 11 years’ worth of data from the news archive on the server hosted by Contabo. Public reports confirm the irreparable loss of data and the service outage; no data breach has been reported, and the exact cause remains unconfirmed.
Classification & severity
- Category
- Availability
- Subtype
- Service outage
- Confidence
- High
Severity assessment
High- Functional impact
- Degraded (critical)
- Information impact
- Destructive loss
- Affected scope
- Organization-wide
- Critical service
- Degraded
- Public confidence
- Moderate
- Recoverability
- Extended
Several public reports confirm the complete outage of the website and the irreparable loss of files belonging to a media outlet. Although the cause has not been conclusively determined, the impact on data availability and integrity is well documented.
Timeline
The website elpitazo.net begins to experience problems and goes offline (some sources date the outage to November 20, while others cite November 21, 2025).
Complete outage of the elpitazo.net website; the hosting provider Contabo informs El Pitazo that all information stored on the server was deleted and that they do not know how it happened.
El Pitazo issues a statement from its board of directors denouncing the site’s downtime and the deletion of its archives; it sends a letter to Contabo’s executive team (CEO Stephan Wolfram and VP of Finance Mario Wilhelm) requesting an immediate solution.
El Pitazo reports that as of that date, it has not received a response from Contabo and is working to set up a new website and blog on another server.
The SNTP issued a statement expressing concern and solidarity, warning that the provider’s lack of transparency, combined with its history of attacks and pressure to remove content, raises the possibility of an incident associated with an unacknowledged or unreported attack.