Venezuela, hacking revealed, now what?

Pablo Rodriguez

With the ambassadors accredited in Venezuela, Attorney General Tarek William Saab validated the information of the last hours. The hacker operating under the pseudonym ASTRA took responsibility for the attack on the National Electoral Council during the afternoon of July 28, the day of the presidential elections in Venezuela.

“He publicly assumed the hacking against the CNE system during the elections in Venezuela, operated under the pseudonym of ASTRA, one of the most renowned in cyber security, in computer crimes. He revealed the existence of a cybernetic plan against the Venezuelan electoral system,” Saab said.

“This is playing dirty,” he remarked. “Trying to overthrow the electoral system to cause deaths and injuries, to sing fraud, to start a civil war, by that way to overthrow the government,” the prosecutor pointed out.

There is war, are you with me?

In an interview to Publimetro, in Mexico, the hacker leader of the Cyber Hunters group, affirmed that he contacted several Anonymous activists. I told them: “Look guys, there’s a war, will you join me? And they told me: Let’s go all the way,” he said. The reference to “until the end” is not minor, it is one of the battle horses of the referent María Corina Machado.

Astra also threatened that the attacks against Venezuela “are going to be permanent and are automated. They take about two days to make a protection, we take about two hours to breach”. A few hours after the elections, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro denounced that the CNE was victim of a cyber attack, which produced an electoral blackout in the nation. “There was a massive attack as never before in our history to the CNE transmission system, the attack continues. Hundreds of attacks to the CNE’s web page,” said the head of state.

During a meeting of the Venezuelan Defense Council last week, the Minister of Science and Technology, Gabriela Jiménez, denounced on August 12 that since July 28, at least 25 state institutions had been victims of cyber-attacks. She specified that in the two weeks following the elections, there had been peaks of 30 million computer attacks per minute against Venezuela.

Response and what’s next

Before the ambassadors, Prosecutor Saab indicated that the attack confessed by ASTRA “slowed down the electronic system and the counting of data, however we managed to avoid the consummation of this attack and the results were read at midnight on July 28”, he remarked.

In the same meeting at the Yellow House in Caracas, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil refuted press versions assumed by some foreign services. “Over there we have seen in some foreign ministries and in some spokespersons of some countries that they are waiting for the CNE to announce the results as mandated by the Constitution. That has already happened. That happened on July 28 at night. There is already an opinion of the National Electoral Council”, emphasized Gil.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice advances in the verification of the results of the elections of last July 28. This while calls from presidents of the region for a new presidential election in Venezuela are fading away.

* Venezuelan journalist of Question, collaborator of the Latin American Center for Strategic Analysis (CLAE).