The Binary Guardians Affects the CENCOEX Portal During the August 7, 2017, Campaign
On August 7, 2017, CENCOEX was named by EFE/BBC Mundo, El Pitazo, and IT Projects as one of the affected websites. BBC Mundo reported that CENCOEX remained offline while other sites had already been restored. There is no public evidence of data exfiltration or tampering with internal foreign exchange systems.
Overview
Missing evidence
Impact details
CENCOEX was identified by EFE/BBC/El Pitazo as an affected entity in “The Binary Guardians” campaign, with the impact limited solely to the availability and integrity of its public website.
Classification & severity
- Category
- Information content security
- Subtype
- website defacement or dns redirection
- Confidence
- High
Public Cobertura links the target to “The Binary Guardians” campaign involving website defacement and redirects. No source confirms data theft or internal system compromise 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 National Foreign Trade Center (CENCOEX) 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.