Kapustkiy hacks website and exposes more than 2,000 accounts

Jan 9, 2017 08:10 GMT  ·  By

One of the websites belonging to Venezuela’s ministry of defense allegedly got hacked a couple of days ago, in protest of what the attacker described as the dictatorship of President Nicolas Maduro in the country.

Security pentester Kapustkiy, who has already targeted some other high-profile websites, told us that he managed to break into the esguarnacpuntademata.mil.ve website during the weekend, exposing more than 2,100 accounts.

A database dump that was provided to Softpedia seems to include names, email addresses, phone numbers, mother and father names, and military status of several individuals. We still can’t confirm if these are sensitive details coming from a private database belonging to the Venezuelan army, but the data doesn’t seem to be public.

We have already contacted the Venezuelan ministry of defense to confirm the alleged hack, but a response is yet to be offered. The website is still up and running at the time of posting this article and Kapustkiy told us that the vulnerability he exploited is still unpatched.

The hacker claims the attack comes in protest against President Nicolas Maduro and his dictatorship, providing us with links to reports covering violence and crisis in the country.

Venezuelan authorities still tight-lipped

While without an official statement from Venezuelan authorities we can’t confirm the hack for the time being, Kapustkiy has a good track on compromising high-profile websites of governments across the world.

In mid-November, Kapustkiy broke into the website belonging to the Dipartimento della Funzione Pubblica from Italy and exposed 45,000 accounts, while in December he breached the Consular Department of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Netherlands and accessed personal information and passport numbers.

In most of the cases, he worked closely with affected authorities to patch the exploited vulnerabilities in the targeted websites. This time, however, the cyberattack has a different motif and he says that more Venezuelan sites could be breached soon, as they are becoming one of his main focuses.

“I am focusing on Venezuela because of the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro. I will attack more sites from the country, but that does not mean that I won’t focus on others too. It is just that Venezuela is the main subject for me,” he told us.

We’re still waiting for a reply from Venezuela’s ministry of defense and an update will be posted when a statement is offered.