The human rights organization Prisoners Defenders reported on Thursday that its website and database of political prisoners in Cuba suffered a cyberattack just minutes after releasing a report documenting a record 1,351 individuals included in its registry as of the end of September.
The incident caused temporary disruptions in access to information used by families of detainees, international organizations, diplomats, and media to consult the situation of Cuban political prisoners.
According to the organization in a statement released from Madrid, the attack involved a coordinated flood of automated requests from hundreds of IP addresses, designed to overwhelm the servers and take their platforms offline.
According to their description, it was a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, a technique aimed at preventing access to a page by overwhelming it with excessive requests, without necessarily involving an intrusion into its systems or data theft. Prisoners Defenders stated that they managed to contain it with their protection mechanisms and the services of their security providers.
"There has been no leakage, loss, or alteration of data. The database of political prisoners in Cuba and the information of the families remain intact and secure," the entity specified.
The affected services have been restored, according to the statement.
The origin of the attack remains unclear
Although Prisoners Defenders believes the incident was intentional, those responsible have not been publicly identified so far.
The organization explained that its internal technical analysis detected the use of cloud servers rented from commercial providers and configured to obscure the true origin of the requests.
In his view, these characteristics indicate a coordinated operation that required technical and economic resources.
The entity described the coincidence as "a coherent, almost evident pattern, with a deliberate attempt to silence the documentation of human rights violations in Cuba at the time of its greatest dissemination."
The September report recorded a new high in political prisoners in Cuba
The cybersecurity incident occurred shortly after Prisoners Defenders released its report for September 2026, in which it recorded 1,351 political and conscience prisoners, a new record in its monthly reports.
The report included 50 newly verified cases and recorded 38 deaths compared to the previous list.
Among those included are 152 women and 40 who were minors at the time of their arrest.
The organization also warned about the sanitary conditions of the incarcerated population for political reasons and documented 476 prisoners with illnesses who remain incarcerated, many of whom do not have adequate access to medication and medical assistance, according to their investigations.
These records are part of the documentation work carried out by Prisoners Defenders since late 2018, which is periodically disseminated among international institutions and the families of those affected.
The incident adds to previous reports of cyberattacks against independent media and organizations linked to the defense of human rights in Cuba.
In July 2026, the independent outlet elTOQUE reported a massive digital attack, during which its protection systems recorded approximately 124.85 million suspicious requests in less than three hours.
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