Cyber attacks against Venezuela could have cost more than 100 million dollars (+ USAID, Macedonia)

Published at: 13/08/2024 01:09 PM

From July 28 until the first week of August, Venezuela was the nation on the planet that received the most cyberattacks, reaching more than 30 million per minute, which shows that behind them lies great economic and technological power.

According to data provided by the Revolutionary Government, due to the sophistication of these attacks, the cost per minute, as reported on Monday by the Vice President of Science, Technology and Education, Gabriela Jiménez, could reach up to 5 thousand dollars. In other words, an hour of attacks against the country's technological infrastructure could rise to 300,000 dollars.

In addition, the data provided by the Minister of Science and Technology, which were consolidated until last weekend, allow us to infer that from July 28 to Sunday, August 11, Venezuela has received more than 336 hours of attacks, which could bring “investment” to 100 million 800 thousand dollars to destroy the country's computer systems and, above all, to question the legitimacy of the past presidential elections.

During his participation in the Council of State and the Council for the Defense of the Nation, Jiménez explained that during the above-mentioned period he received five types of cyberattacks: Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) represents 65.52% of attacks; theft of information through e-mails with malicious software, it is 17.24% of attacks; hijacking of BGP routes, 3.45%; expansion of DNS 6.90% and 3.44% disfigurement of web pages.

“Over the weekend, we observed the kidnapping of Cantv's IPs. IPs are falsified and when users want to link to one of the services, they get a completely different portal and the servers collapse as a whole,” he said.

In the same way, he noted that reports prepared by the American company Netscout and the Russian cybersecurity company Kapersky confirm that Venezuela is the South American nation that received the most cyberattacks between July and August.

Masked Imperialism

It is important to remember that on July 30, the Attorney General of the Republic, Tarek William Saab, reported that most of the cyberattacks against the Venezuelan Electoral System came from North Macedonia, a country born from the dismemberment of the former Yugoslavia that is listed as an ally of North American imperialism.

Although authorities from that small nation have denied their participation in these events, it is at least suspicious that in November 2023, the United States, through the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the government of the United Kingdom, will carry out a training course on cybersecurity in the IT laboratory of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Saints Cyril and Methodius of Macedonia.

According to a press release published on the USAID website, this course sought to prepare the workforce in the area of cybersecurity.

“Cyberattacks against critical infrastructure can paralyze public services, erase digital systems and hack state records. To strengthen North Macedonia's cybersecurity resilience, USAID is working with critical infrastructure operators in North Macedonia to train employees on how to prevent, respond to and recover from cyberattacks,” the text states.

In addition, in the note, USAID recognizes that it has invested more than 840 million dollars in North Macedonia since 1993. “The work of USAID promotes the national security and economic prosperity of the United States, demonstrates American generosity and promotes a path to self-sufficiency and resilience of beneficiaries,” the text states.

These elements, plus the immediate recognition by the Joe Biden administration of the theory of the alleged electoral fraud of July 28, provide elements of conviction that allow us to infer the direct partition of North American imperialism in these new actions to twist the will of the Venezuelan people and destroy the Bolivarian Project initiated by the Supreme Commander, Hugo Chávez Frías and continued by the President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro Moros.

Mazo News Team