The Binary Guardians take down the VTV website following the Venezuelan Constituent Assembly election
On July 31, 2017, The Binary Guardians listed VTV among the government websites affected following the election of the National Constituent Assembly. CNN verified that VTV remained offline around 11 a.m.; other sources reported that the website had been hacked or compromised. No direct archived screenshot of a defaced VTV homepage was found, so the incident is recorded as an impact on the public website.
Overview
Missing evidence
Impact details
It was reported that VTV/vtv.gob.ve was unavailable or affected during the post-constituent election activity by The Binary Guardians. No data exposure or internal breach was 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 or public portal outage in a public campaign; no confirmed data exposure, internal compromise, or prolonged service outage for the individual target.
Timeline
In the early morning hours, The Binary Guardians claimed to have taken down Venezuelan government websites, and news sources listed VTV among the targets.
CNN confirms that the VTV website was still down around 11 a.m., while other sites were already up and running.
Espacio Público, PanAm Post, and HispanTV have published reports that include VTV in the activities following the Constituent Assembly.