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UPDATED - This site suffered the most relentless DDoS attack we've had to endure since we started reporting Venezuelan corruption issues in October 2002. Something must be happening somewhere, perhaps our investigations into PDVSA's sanctions-evasion antics and corresponding shipping data, which is quickly acted upon by our esteemed readers from U.S. Treasury, that has the chavista thugs riled up. Juan Guaido, and his masters, can't be very happy either. We broke news about their equally reprehensible corruption before anybody else, in fact, we are perhaps the only outlet that never drank the Guaido-is-the-solution kool aid. We have been reliably informed that folk close to Guaido are trying to do very corrupt oil deals through / with CITGO. We are back in business, and will carry on exposing the farcical political scenario in Venezuela, and its underlying and both financially-dependant-and-supportive "entrepreneurial" class.
We have had some sucess lately sourcing never-published-before financial information related to Rafael Ramirez and his cronies, which will be posted here for certain. Stay tuned...
UPDATE 14/08/2020: the DDoS attack on this site started on 17 July. Attack was launched from AWS servers. Leaseweb, my former webhost, tried to keep the site up, but ultimately couldn't. Yesterday morning I got an email from Leaseweb saying:
"We would like to inform you that your domain [infodio.com] has been suspended due to it being the target of a DDoS campaign.
Please note that your domain will not be unsuspended and we ask you to move it away from the Leaseweb network as you have not provided a permanent solution to this reoccurring issue. This issue is affecting not only our infrastructure and the services of other customers, but also putting unnecessary stress on the hosting platform to a point where it is no longer sustainable.
Please move this website from the Leaseweb network within 24 hours."
In all honesty, I can't blame Leaseweb. They did try, but their defence mechanisms are not up to it. Now, a much more robust set up is in place:
Alek @infodi0 Boyd, who exposes corruption in Venezuela, is back online after another monster DDoS. Guessing his ISP/hoster showed him the door. The site is now being protected by Google Shield. Welcome to the club, and keep up the important work https://t.co/h922YaJBP5
— briankrebs (@briankrebs) August 14, 2020
Let's see how this fares against chavista thugs and their international criminal partners. In principle, we should be fine. However, I must reiterate that never before was such a ferocious and sustained attack launched against our work. Considering size of this site and audience, it must have cost a pretty penny.
Logs shows an ever increasing flow of visits from compliance departments from banks all over the place, as well as law enforcement, and Boligarchs are finding hard to have their PR folk whitewash the criminal way in which their "wealth was made".
There are no legit, billionaire entrepreneurs in Venezuela. No one has become minted in the last 20 years lawfully. What Venezuela has is a detritus, an entrepreneurial class so incompetent that only in Venezuela can they "make" any money. Nowhere else.
We expect novel ways to silence us that, given the desperation, could prove physically dangerous. Still, we shall carry on, regardless. The experience, however, has been a steep learning curve in post modern censorship. Tools meant to protect, like DMCA for instance, are misused to eliminate negative content. And the trouble is that tech companies don't really care whether they're being taken for a ride. AWS, to provide an example, has refused to pass details of parties that contracted its servers' services to put this site out of commission.
Hetzner Online, a German service provider, responded to our filing another abuse report for DDoS by saying that they could "only process" our report "by first forwarding them to our customer", that is our private data and complaint given to those attacking us, not the other way round. It's a bizarro world out there, where unbridled criminality gets away with it in nearly all cases.
But not here...
