The Binary Guardians defaced the Venezuelan National Assembly’s website during the August 7, 2017, campaign
On August 7, 2017, the National Assembly reported on its official account that its website had been hacked. The site also appears on public and technical lists of targets affected by The Binary Guardians during the campaign linked to the Operation David message. There is no public evidence of data exfiltration.
Overview
Missing evidence
Impact details
It was reported that the National Assembly’s website had been tampered with or compromised as part of the “The Binary Guardians” campaign. This incident is unrelated to the social media account hijacking that occurred in January 2018.
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 compromised the public portal of the National Assembly of Venezuela 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.