The Binary Guardians defaced the National Electoral Council (CNE) website during the August 7, 2017, campaign
On August 7, 2017, The Binary Guardians once again targeted the National Electoral Council’s website as part of a defacement and DNS redirection campaign against .ve domains. Public sources indicate that the CNE website displayed a pamphlet supporting Operation David and a video of *The Great Dictator*; a CNE spokesperson confirmed to BBC Mundo that the site had been hacked and was restored shortly after noon. There is no public evidence of data exfiltration.
Overview
Missing evidence
Impact details
The CNE website was mentioned in reports by EFE, the BBC, Freedom House, and government-affiliated media as one of the sites affected by “The Binary Guardians” campaign. No data breaches were reported.
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 National Electoral Council’s (CNE) public portal 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.