Hack of the Palpitar Trujillano Instagram account and blocking of the Noticia y Punto website (December 2022)
In December 2022, the Instagram account of the Venezuelan media outlet Palpitar Trujillano (with more than 100,000 followers), which covers Trujillo, Mérida, and Zulia, suffered four cyberattacks and suspensions: Meta suspended the original account on December 10 following reports from third parties, and the alternate accounts created afterward were hacked or deleted on December 15, 20, and 25, as documented by IPYS Venezuela and Espacio Público. The outlet’s director, Andrés Briceño Sulbarán, described the incidents as sabotage against freedom of expression and filed a complaint with the CICPC in Valera; those responsible remain unidentified. Meanwhile, the website of the Zulia-based media outlet Noticia y Punto (noticiaypunto.com) has been blocked since December 22 by the providers Cantv, Digitel, and Movistar—a block verified by IPYS using OONI’s DNS methodology. The type of verifiable incident in the case of Palpitar Trujillano corresponds to an “account takeover.”
Impact details
The Instagram account of Palpitar Trujillano (more than 100,000 followers) was hacked, deleted, and suspended four times in December 2022 (December 10, 15, 20, and 25), disrupting its primary distribution channel and affecting 16 media professionals and partner media outlets. In a related development, the Noticia y Punto (Zulia) website has been blocked by internet service providers since December 22, 2022. No data exfiltration has been reported.
Classification & severity
- Category
- Intrusions
- Subtype
- Unprivileged account compromise
- Confidence
- High
Severity assessment
Medium- Functional impact
- Degraded (non-critical)
- Information impact
- Integrity loss
- Affected scope
- Organization-wide
- Critical service
- None
- Public confidence
- Limited
- Recoverability
- Supplemented
Noticia y Punto has documented the takeover or suspension of social media accounts and related DNS blocking; no data breaches have been reported.
Timeline
Meta suspends Palpitar Trujillano's original Instagram account following complaints from third parties.
The alternate account @palpitartrujillano1 is hacked and deleted.
The "Palpitar Trujillano Oficial" account is hacked/deleted.
The Noticia y Punto (Zulia) website is blocked by the providers Cantv, Digitel, and Movistar, as verified by IPYS via OONI.
A fourth Instagram account belonging to Palpitar Trujillano is hacked/suspended.
Espacio Público issued an alert documenting the hacking of the Palpitar Trujillano Instagram account and the complaint filed with the CICPC in Valera.