The Binary Guardians Disrupts CONATEL's Portal During the Campaign Against .ve Domains
On August 7, 2017, CONATEL was identified as an affected target by EFE/El Pitazo and appears on IT Projects’ technical list. CONATEL’s significance is further underscored by the fact that NIC.ve—described by CANTV as the target of the DNS attack—reports to that regulator. There is no public evidence of data exfiltration.
Overview
Missing evidence
Impact details
CONATEL was mentioned in the “The Binary Guardians” campaign, and government statements referred to a NIC.ve/DNS redirect affecting official websites. No data breach was reported.
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 has compromised the public portal of the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) 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.