DDoS Attack Against the Venezuelan News Site La Gran Aldea (September 10–12, 2020)
The independent Venezuelan news site La Gran Aldea (lagranaldea.com) was hit by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that prevented readers from accessing the site organically starting at noon on Thursday, September 10, and continued through Saturday, September 12, 2020, leaving it virtually offline for nearly two days. According to the outlet’s technical team and its director, Alejandro Hernández, most of the requests originated from Venezuelan IP addresses, and the spam traffic peaked at 700 visits per minute. The outlet reported slow loading times and the inability to access two articles that were specifically targeted (one about Gustavo Perdomo, CEO of Globovisión, and another about Jorge Giménez Ochoa, president of the Venezuelan Soccer Federation). IPYS Venezuela condemned the attack. No specific perpetrator was publicly identified.
Impact details
The DDoS attack rendered La Gran Aldea virtually inaccessible for more than 40 hours between September 10 and 12, 2020. 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
The DDoS attack began at noon on Thursday, September 10, preventing readers from accessing the site organically.
The site is practically down; spam traffic of up to 700 visits per minute from Venezuelan IP addresses.
The attack ended on Saturday, September 12, after about 40 hours—nearly two days—of disruption.
Media outlets and organizations (TalCual, IPYS Venezuela) report on and publicly condemn the attack.