Caraota Digital Goes Offline for More Than 12 Hours Due to a Web Attack
On March 8, 2017, Caraota Digital suffered attacks against its website: one redirected users to a sales page, and another took the site offline for about 12 to 13 hours. Sources place this within a wave of attacks against Venezuelan media outlets and NGOs, but the technique used is not a “clean” DDoS; it is classified as a service disruption due to compromise or a web attack.
Overview
Missing evidence
Impact details
Caraota Digital reported that users were redirected to a sales page and that a virus affected the website, after which the service was down for more than 13 hours. No exposure of confidential data was reported.
Classification & severity
- Category
- Information content security
- Subtype
- website compromise or malicious redirection
- Confidence
- High
PROVEA reports a redirect to a sales page, a virus affecting the portal, and more than 13 hours of downtime; this confirms the compromise/redirect of the public website, as well as the impact on availability.
Severity assessment
Medium- Functional impact
- Denial (non-critical)
- Information impact
- Integrity loss
- Affected scope
- Multiple systems
- Critical service
- None
- Public confidence
- Limited
- Recoverability
- Regular
Public news portal: compromise/redirect and more than 13 hours of service disruption; no exposure of confidential data or impact on critical services.
Timeline
Caraota Digital goes offline for more than 12 hours due to a cyberattack