US and Observers Monitor for Cyber Threats and Disinformation After Venezuela Raid

U.S. agencies are on high alert for potential cyberattacks following the country’s January 3 attack on Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro. Security experts fear that nations aligned with Venezuela, particularly Russia and China, could launch retaliatory digital strikes against American interests.

“While CISA has not identified a specific threat at this time, we remain steadfast in monitoring for any indicators of malicious activity,” said Madhu Gottumukkala, acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, emphasizing the need for “heightened vigilance” in the current climate.

The agency’s monitoring capabilities have been hampered by staffing changes implemented under the Trump administration. Last year, CISA reduced personnel dedicated to tracking online misinformation, part of a broader reorganization following Republican accusations that the agency had overstepped its authority by allegedly censoring protected speech.

Since the U.S. operation in Venezuela, cybersecurity monitors have observed a significant uptick in misleading content circulating online. However, much of this material appears to be coming from individual users rather than coordinated state operations.

“There has been a wave of hoaxes created with AI, there is a lot of synthetic content on social media,” explained Adrián González, co-founder of Venezuela-based misinformation watchdog Cazadores de Fake News. “But it is spontaneous: it is content generated by the same users, which confuses a lot of other users.”

González noted that despite documented historical coordination between Venezuela and Russia to amplify propaganda, the current wave of fake content lacks the hallmarks of an organized campaign. “These videos are generated in a spontaneous way and are not coordinated by a large number of users,” he said. “They don’t form part of coordinated disinformation operations.”

Some of the most widely shared AI-generated images purportedly show Maduro in prison, content which fact-checkers have worked to debunk. “They are creating images of Maduro detained that don’t exist, creating videos of Maduro dancing, uniformed in jail, or of the destruction of military or iconic installations of Chavismo that, in reality, were never destroyed,” González said. Chavismo refers to the left-wing political ideology associated with former president Hugo Chávez and continued under Maduro’s leadership.

Digital threat researchers have also identified more sophisticated preparation for potential disinformation campaigns. Rishika Desai, a threat researcher with cybersecurity firm BforeAI, reported a surge in suspicious domain registrations.

“We identified over 140 domains in various stages of preparation in the past three days, referencing alleged ‘releases’ or sites claiming as his [Maduro’s] official narrative,” Desai said. The firm documented more than 460 new domains focused on themes like Nobel Peace Prize claims and petition campaigns against political figures.

The researchers have also spotted financially motivated scams emerging in the chaos. “We noted the emergence of coin-branded narratives, including so-called ‘Venezuelan libre’ tokens and ‘Crypto Maduro,’ which are commonly used for fraudulent investments and pump-and-dump schemes,” Desai added.

While Venezuela has long employed information warfare tactics through state media and online supporters, these efforts have typically lacked the sophistication and global reach seen in operations by Russia and China. Experts remain concerned that these larger powers could leverage the current situation to intensify their own digital operations against U.S. interests.

The situation highlights the increasingly complex intersection of geopolitical conflicts and digital information spaces. As tensions between the United States and Venezuela continue, cybersecurity agencies and independent monitors face the dual challenge of tracking potential state-sponsored attacks while combating the flood of misleading content generated by opportunistic individuals.