Chavismo once again targets Venezuela Política in an effort to silence our voice denouncing the abuses of Hugo Chávez’s regime and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, since they took power.
Venezuela Política was warned by our hosting and security services for independent media, Qurium, about a series of global attempts to remove content from the Bifrost replication service, a type of trojan malware that infects Windows and Linux systems to allow unauthorized remote control.
Qurium Media Foundation is a non-profit Swedish organization that provides digital security solutions and supports independent media and human rights organizations in repressive regimes.
Once again, Maduro’s dictatorial and tyrannical regime shows its contempt for democracy and freedom, especially the freedom of information, freedom of expression, and the practice of independent journalism. This assertion is backed by the multiple attacks we have faced since we began exposing the corruption characteristic of chavismo in 1999.
Systematic Attack by Chavismo on Venezuela Política
The warning from Qurium states that an analysis revealed efforts by actors linked to the Venezuelan state, as well as reputation management companies, aimed at eliminating duplicate content that exposes the corruption and abuse of power perpetrated by Maduro’s regime.
This isn’t surprising, given that Venezuela Política has a long history of attacks from chavismo aimed at silencing us, both on this hosting service and on the previous Blogger platform, where the page was deleted after a takedown attack or brand impersonation.
This time, the Qurium Media Foundation discovered multiple removal requests sent to Google against its Bifrost replication service (remote access trojan malware). This service is designed to maintain access to independent journalism in countries with strong internet censorship.
For nearly a decade, Bifrost has allowed access to blocked news sites by automatically creating live replicas of dynamic WordPress-based websites.
Qurium explains that these replicas are hosted on large cloud platforms such as Google Cloud and Amazon S3, whose large-scale blocking is too costly for most censorship regimes. This enables readers to access censored material through standard web links, without needing VPNs, apps, or special browser extensions.
Investigation Unveils Chavismo
Thanks to the Lumen Database—a transparency project that collects and analyzes legal complaints and takedown requests submitted to platforms like Google, Twitter (X), Reddit, and Wikipedia—Qurium discovered that the replicated content from Venezuela Política had been the subject of several removal requests.
As a result, Qurium began a detailed review to determine who was making these requests, which content was being targeted, and how frequently these actions occurred.
The investigation revealed coordinated international efforts to repress journalism and eliminate investigative reporting through legal mechanisms, which we produce daily on the pages of Venezuela Política.
Specifically, Qurium found that the removal requests originated from institutions linked to Nicolás Maduro’s regime and reputation management companies operating in Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Russia, and Venezuela.
Our security service indicates that while most claims target individual articles for defamation or copyright violations, Russian authorities (Roskomnadzor) demand the removal of entire domains.
Despite these attempts, Qurium highlights that Google has not complied with any of the 20 takedown requests, meaning all replicated articles and websites remain accessible through Google searches. However, Qurium warns that they were not notified about these requests, except in one case, an omission that limited transparency and hindered the investigation.
Therefore, greater transparency from Google in these cases would have been valuable from an investigative perspective.
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