Venezuela humanitarian aid volunteer platform blocked

The volunteer registration web platform for Venezuela’s Coalition for Aid and Freedom has been blocked by state-run internet provider CANTV (AS8048) at 13:40 UTC (9:40 AM VET) Saturday 16 February 2019 as members took to the streets, according to NetBlocks internet observatory measurements. The restriction is ongoing at time of writing.

The new restrictions come on Saturday as volunteers have mobilised to the streets in support of National Assembly president Juan Guaidó, in favour of aid for the country’s embattled healthcare and humanitarian sector. The website of the initiative, voluntariosxvenezuela.com, remains online and available via other providers in Venezuela and internationally.

The incident follows an earlier apparent state-sponsored hacking attempt involving the website. On 12 February, security researchers uncovered an extensive state-backed phishing attack hijacking the volunteer website to collect the personal details of new applicants:

The same day, provider CANTV blocked several international online services including YouTube:

 


Methodology

Internet performance and service reachability are determined via NetBlocks web probe privacy-preserving analytics. Each measurement consists of latency round trip time, outage type and autonomous system number aggregated in real-time to assess service availability and latency in a given country. Network providers and locations are enumerated as vantage point pairs. The root cause of a service outage may be additionally corroborated by means of traffic analysis and manual testing as detailed in the report.


NetBlocks is an internet monitor working at the intersection of digital rights, cyber-security and internet governance. Independent and non-partisan, NetBlocks strives to deliver a fair and inclusive digital future for all.

press | contact ] Graphics and visualizations are provided for fair use in unaltered form reflecting the meaning and intent in which they were published, with clear credit and source attribution to NetBlocks. Intellectual property rights are protected including but not limited to key findings, facts and figures, trademarks, copyrights, and original reporting, are held by NetBlocks. Citation and source attribution are required at the point of use.