DDoS Attacks Against the El Pitazo News Portal Involving More Than 1,800 IP Addresses (June–July 2018)
The Venezuelan news website El Pitazo suffered distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in late June and early July 2018, amid blockades of its domains by internet service providers in Venezuela. According to Espacio Público, during an incident that occurred between 8:50 p.m. on Friday and 6:40 a.m. on Saturday, more than 1,800 different IP addresses simultaneously attempted to access the server to overload it, targeting the three domains the outlet used to circumvent censorship (elpitazo.com, elpitazo.info, and elpitazo.ml). The outlet’s technical team managed to contain the attack, and the website continued to publish content via social media. The traffic attributed to Germany, Brazil, Poland, and the United States that is circulating on El Pitazo corresponds to a separate, later attack (November 2018), not to the June–July 2018 incident.
Impact details
El Pitazo suffered a DDoS attack originating from more than 1,800 IP addresses that affected elpitazo.com, elpitazo.info, and elpitazo.ml. No data breach has been reported.
Classification & severity
- Category
- Availability
- Subtype
- Distributed denial of service
- Confidence
- High
Public Space/IPYS coverage documents a DDoS attack against El Pitazo involving more than 1,800 IP addresses.
Severity assessment
Medium- Functional impact
- Denial (non-critical)
- Information impact
- None
- Affected scope
- Organization-wide
- Critical service
- None
- Public confidence
- Limited
- Recoverability
- Regular
Incident involving media/civil society website availability or content integrity; no confirmed data exposure or critical service interruption.
Timeline
El Pitazo's server was hit by a DDoS attack from 8:50 p.m. on Friday to 6:40 a.m. on Saturday, with more than 1,800 different IP addresses attacking elpitazo.com, elpitazo.info, and elpitazo.ml.
Espacio Público publishes the report “El Pitazo’s website suffered new attacks on its servers,” documenting the DDoS attack.
The media outlet's technical team is handling the attack; the website continues to post on social media.