{"id":175346,"date":"2026-01-07T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/07\/cyberattacks-likely-part-of-military-operation-in-venezuela\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T13:25:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T18:25:12","slug":"cyberattacks-likely-part-of-military-operation-in-venezuela","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/07\/cyberattacks-likely-part-of-military-operation-in-venezuela\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyberattacks Likely Part of Military Operation in Venezuela"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cyberattacks Likely Part of Military Operation in Venezuela<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.darkreading.com\/cybersecurity-operations\/cyberattacks-part-military-operation-venezuela<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-01-07 09:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.darkreading.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. The recent US military operation in Venezuela resulting in the capture of President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro had “layering effects” provided by US Cyber Command and other agencies, but the degree to which cyber operations played a role in the raid remains a question mark, experts say.During a Jan. 3 press conference following the successful operation, President Donald Trump hinted that “a certain expertise” had allow US forces to shut down power to the area of operations. “It was dark \u2014 the lights of Caracas were largely turned off due to a certain expertise that we have,” he told reporters during the press conference.While many media outlets quickly declared that the wording suggested cyber operations had been used to black out the Venezuelan capital, the “official” confirmation remained vague. Monitoring network NetBlocks recorded a loss of Internet connectivity in parts of the capital that coincided with the military operation, but purely kinetic attacks could have caused the outage, says Alp Toker, director at the digital-rights and Internet-governance organization.”Our telemetry from Caracas on the night of the operation doesn’t expose or indicate the use of any specific cyber capability,” he clarifies. “Timings and geolocation match up closely with the kinetic force of the operation, which usually means that the explosions caused the telecommunications failures rather than the other way round.”Related:Afripol Focuses on Regional Cyber Challenges, Deepening Cooperation\u00a0On Jan. 3, Venezuela suffered significant network degradation. Source: NetBlocksWhile experts are quick to warn against jumping to conclusions, the US has regularly used offensive cyber operations, but typically understates its efforts. In 2010, the US and Israel targeted Iran’s nuclear processing capability with malware that spread through infecting USB drives, disrupting about 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges the nation was using to refine uranium. Two years later, various national security officials acknowledged the effort of creating and releasing the so-called Stuxnet computer worm, an effort known in the Bush and Obama administrations as “Olympic Games.”Since then, US military and intelligence agencies have occasionally discussed their operations. Among the public cyberattacks are included the National Security Agency’s disruption of ISIS’s media presence in an operation known as Glowing Symphony and the disruption of the Russian information operation known as the Internet Research Agency by US Cyber Command, essentially taking down the IRA’s disinformation capability the same day as the 2018 midterm elections in the US. In 2019, the US disrupted Iranian networks being used in attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.Related:Inside Iran’s Cyber Objectives: What Do They Want?’Layering Effects’?The military mission in Venezuela involved a large number of agencies that have conducted cyber operations in the past, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). In remarks following President Trump’s, Gen. Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said all three agencies participated in the operation, but did not give details on their exact roles.”As they approached Venezuelan shores, the United States began layering different effects provided by SPACECOM, CYBERCOM, and other members of the inter-agency [task force] to create a pathway,” he said.The actual outage could have been caused by some other form of electronic warfare or a kinetic attack, says Adam Segal, director of the Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program at the Council of Foreign Relations.”If it was cyber, then it shows a significant use with a special operation,” he says. “These have happened before, but, especially in Ukraine, they have usually involved a wide range of kinetic attacks as well.”Venezuela’s Network Lacks ResilienceVenezuela is a fairly soft target for cyber operations because of a variety of factors, including the use of well-understood digital infrastructure that shares technologies common in Western nations due to investments prior to Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, says Toker.Related:Do National Data Laws Carry Cyber-Risks for Large Orgs?”The know-how, and often the people, who built the critical infrastructure, are readily available,” he says. “You can find blueprints, equipment lists, it’s all out there. This isn’t Iran or Iraq.”Power and telecoms staff, who are not necessarily ideologically aligned with the authorities, have often complained about the neglect of the infrastructure, says Toker.”We’ve tracked hundreds of failures that are caused due to minor incidents that cascade through the network,” he says. “Though the situation has improved slightly in the last couple of years, Venezuela’s infrastructure is genuinely crumbling.”In one incident, the government-controlled Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) declared President Maduro the winner of the national election following delays in vote counting that the group claimed came from a cyberattack. Cybersecurity experts at Team Cymru verified an attack, but could not determine if it could have caused an outage.Similarly, whether the US military relied on cyber to produce a power outage remains unanswered, but Toker argues that cyber will continue to play a role in ongoing operations.”It’s difficult to say if cyber was a key element of the initial Caracas operation, but I have no doubt that it’s going to play a major part as the situation develops,” he says. “The vulnerabilities are there and ready to exploit and it’s the perfect testing ground for cyber as a nation-building instrument.”
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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