El Pitazo
Communications · Private elpitazo.net
- Incidents
- 5
- High impact
- 1
- First seen
- Mar 9, 2017
- Latest seen
- Nov 21, 2025
Linked incidents
Complete outage of the elpitazo.net website and deletion of the news archive from the Contabo hosting provider’s server (November 2025)
The Venezuelan digital media outlet El Pitazo reported that its website, elpitazo.net, had been completely down since Thursday, November 20–21, 2025, and the deletion of its entire journalistic archive—nearly 11 years’ worth of content—stored on the server that hosted it, owned by the German hosting company Contabo, based in Munich. According to a statement from El Pitazo’s board of directors, Contabo notified them that “all the information stored there has been deleted and that they do not know how it happened.” The news outlet tried unsuccessfully to obtain an explanation from the provider: on Saturday, November 22, it sent a letter to Contabo’s executive board, including CEO Stephan Wolfram and Vice President of Finance Mario Wilhelm, requesting an immediate solution, and as of Monday, November 24, it had not received a response. El Pitazo and the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP) did not rule out the possibility that this was an incident linked to an unacknowledged or unreported attack, given the history of blockades and attacks against the media outlet (Conatel had previously ordered the blocking of four of its domains: elpitazo.com, elpitazo.info, elpitazo.ml, and elpitazo.net) and the repeated pressure from reputation management firms to remove or modify content about politically exposed individuals. The exact cause of the deletion (an attack, an error, or a deliberate action by the provider) was not publicly confirmed. The outlet’s team worked urgently to set up a new website and blog on another server, while keeping its social media channels and YouTube channel active.
Unknown individuals are impersonating El Pitazo to ask readers for their WhatsApp codes
Between May 26 and June 6, 2023, unknown individuals impersonated El Pitazo on WhatsApp to call readers and ask for verification codes, a tactic aimed at hijacking accounts.
Armando.info and El Pitazo Face Selective ISP Blocking in Venezuela (August 2018)
During August 2018, Armando.info and El Pitazo were subject to selective blocking by Venezuelan internet service providers. El Pitazo reported a new block starting on the night of August 1; OONI/IPYS documented DNS and HTTP manipulation targeting its domains on CANTV, Digitel, Movistar, and Movilnet, resulting in an approximate 50% drop in traffic. For Armando.info, OONI tests on August 13 showed intermittent HTTP failures, particularly on CANTV; OONI noted that the block was neither uniform nor conclusive as sole evidence of intent, although server issues were unlikely due to the use of Google Shield. The DDoS attacks against both media outlets remain a separate historical context: there is no public evidence of a single actor, botnet, or DDoS infrastructure involved in this episode.
DDoS Attacks Against the El Pitazo News Portal Involving More Than 1,800 IP Addresses (June–July 2018)
The Venezuelan news website El Pitazo suffered distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in late June and early July 2018, amid blockades of its domains by internet service providers in Venezuela. According to Espacio Público, during an incident that occurred between 8:50 p.m. on Friday and 6:40 a.m. on Saturday, more than 1,800 different IP addresses simultaneously attempted to access the server to overload it, targeting the three domains the outlet used to circumvent censorship (elpitazo.com, elpitazo.info, and elpitazo.ml). The outlet’s technical team managed to contain the attack, and the website continued to publish content via social media. The traffic attributed to Germany, Brazil, Poland, and the United States that is circulating on El Pitazo corresponds to a separate, later attack (November 2018), not to the June–July 2018 incident.
El Pitazo suffers a DDoS attack and is inaccessible for about 17 hours
On March 9, 2017, El Pitazo suffered a DDoS attack following an initial phase of deindexing or preventive blocking, and its website was inaccessible for approximately 17 hours. Sources describe it as one of the clearest cases of a DDoS attack amid the wave of attacks against Venezuelan media outlets and organizations.