Dark Storm Admits Major Cyber Attack on X Platform

Elon Musk’s social media platform X experienced a series of major outages on Monday, 10 March, with tens of thousands of users reporting access issues. The disruptions came in three distinct waves throughout the day.

At its peak, nearly 40,000 users reported problems on Downdetector, indicating the widespread nature of the attack. Many couldn’t even load the website or access the mobile app.

Musk quickly attributed the disruption to a “massive cyberattack” in a post on the platform, suggesting that substantial resources were required to execute such an attack.

In a Fox Business interview with Larry Kudlow, Musk specifically pointed to Ukraine as the source. He claimed the attack originated from “IP addresses in the Ukraine area.”

Meanwhile, a hacking collective known as Dark Storm Team claimed responsibility for the attack.

They posted their declaration on Telegram before the channel was deleted for terms of service violations.

Screenshots shared on X showed Dark Storm Team’s claims that they had “taken Twitter offline.” They included images of failed connection attempts from various global locations.

Cybersecurity group SpyoSecure confirmed Dark Storm Team’s claims, sharing evidence of the group taking credit for what’s known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

Social media personality Ed Krassenstein reported direct contact with Dark Storm’s leader.

According to Krassenstein, the group claimed the attack was merely “a demonstration of our strength, with no political motives.”

Political Tensions and Technical Response

Established in 2023, the Dark Storm Team is a pro-Palestinian hacktivist organization that primarily targets NATO nations and launches cyberattacks against organizations they believe support Israel.

Instead of stealing data, the group employs its operations to disrupt services, and it has specifically targeted organizations that support Israel after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

The timing of the attack on Elon Musk’s platform X coincides with growing tensions between him and critics of his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

His electric vehicle company, Tesla, has also faced protests across the United States related to the DOGE program, and its stock dropped over 15% in recent trading sessions.

Despite the platform disruptions, Musk later stated that X had been restored, and to prevent future attacks, X has reportedly adopted Cloudflare’s DDoS protection services.

This added security layer should help mitigate similar attempted disruptions.

Check Point Research revealed that U.S. organizations faced an average of 1,323 cyber attacks weekly in February. The media and entertainment sector ranked fourth among targeted industries.

This isn’t X’s first encounter with DDoS attacks. Last August, Musk reported a similar incident prior to his interview with then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Since the X outage fell during the NFL’s mock draft, many fans were very irritated and turned to other sites like Threads and BlueSky to find breaking agency news.