"The Binary Guardians" Affects the SAIME Portal During the August 7, 2017, Campaign
On August 7, 2017, SAIME was identified by EFE/El Pitazo, BBC Mundo/Los Angeles Times, Freedom House, and IT Projects as one of the affected targets. The sources describe the defacement or redirection of web pages with political messages; there is no evidence of the exfiltration of immigration or identity data.
Overview
Missing evidence
Impact details
SAIME/saime.gob.ve was identified by EFE/BBC/El Pitazo as affected by the campaign, with an impact limited to the integrity and availability of its public website.
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 the Administrative Service for Identification, Migration, and Foreigners (SAIME) 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.