The Binary Guardians defaces or redirects the CANTV portal during the campaign against .ve domains
On August 7, 2017, CANTV was named by EFE, El Pitazo, Runrun.es, and IT Projects as one of the websites affected by The Binary Guardians. Days later, the president of CANTV publicly described an attack on NIC.ve/DNS that redirected multiple official .ve websites. There is no public evidence of data exfiltration from the operator.
Overview
Missing evidence
Impact details
The DNS redirection related to the CANTV and NIC.ve portals was covered in public and government-affiliated media outlets. This report is limited to the portion concerning the public portal and the DNS redirection, and does not address the subsequent effects of the telecommunications service disruption.
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 has compromised the public portal of Compania Anonima Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV) 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.