The Binary Guardians attack the Bolivarian Navy’s website during the August 7, 2017, campaign
On August 7, 2017, the Navy was named by EFE/BBC Mundo, El Pitazo, IT Projects, and Freedom House as one of the military sites affected by The Binary Guardians. The BBC also mentioned the Venezuelan Navy in its English-language coverage. There is no public evidence of data exfiltration or compromise of internal naval systems.
Overview
Missing evidence
Impact details
Armada Bolivariana/armada.mil.ve was identified by EFE/BBC/El Pitazo as affected by the campaign, with only the integrity and availability of its public website impacted.
Classification & severity
- Category
- Information content security
- Subtype
- website defacement or dns redirection
- Confidence
- High
Public information links the target to the campaign to deface and redirect The Binary Guardians’ website. No source confirms a data breach or a compromise of the internal system in the case of this specific target.
Severity assessment
Medium- Functional impact
- Degraded (non-critical)
- Information impact
- Integrity loss
- Affected scope
- Single system
- Critical service
- Potential
- Public confidence
- Limited
- Recoverability
- Regular
Website defacement/redirection in a public campaign; no confirmed data exposure, internal compromise, or prolonged service outage for the individual target.
Timeline
The Binary Guardians have compromised the public portal of the Bolivarian Navy (AB) as part of a defacement/redirect campaign targeting .ve domains.
The group spreads the message "Our struggle is digital" and expresses support for Operation David; sources at Reuters/IBTimes indicate that it was not part of the military operation.
Media outlets and technical sources publish lists of affected sites, with varying scopes: at least 25, more than 30, and about 40 websites.