X (Twitter) Cyber Attack Causes Service Outage

[Fabled Automatic]

Hours after a series of outages Monday that left X unavailable to thousands of users, Elon Musk claimed that the social media platform was being targeted in a “massive cyberattack.”

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk claimed in a post. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”

Elon Musk claims X being targeted in ‘massive cyberattack’ as service goes down

 

[DS2021]

X Under Attack—Dark Storm Says It Was Behind Musk Platform DDoS

While Elon Musk looks to Ukraine, a pro-Palestine group called Dark Storm has claimed responsibility for the massive cyberattack that took down X.

www.forbes.com

X Under Attack—Dark Storm Says It Was Behind Musk Platform DDoS

Dark Storm, however, is known to use tactics that are very similar to a Russia-linked group called KillNet which also had a history of attacking western targets, and Ukraine supporting organizations, before becoming a more mainstream attackers-for-hire service. Dark Storm itself was first observed in 2023 and has attacked NATO countries, Israel and the U.S. with large-scale DDoS campaigns as well as ransomware attacks.

Dark Storm has claimed responsibility for the X cyberattack in its Telegram channel, “Twitter has been taken offline by Dark Storm Team” it posted using the old name for X as, one assumes, a sign of defiance against Musk. The group also shared screenshots from Check Host which is often used by DDoS attack groups to prove that an attack is happening as it illustrates site availability from multiple global servers.

 

[Fabled Automatic]

Musk is blaming Ukraine for the cyber attack, despite a pro-Palestinian hacktivist collective taking responsibility for it.

Platform monitor Downdetector says it had more than 1.6 million reports of problems with the social media site from users around the world on Monday.
"We're not sure exactly what happened but there was a massive cyber-attack to try and bring down the X system with IP [Internet Protocol] addresses originating in the Ukraine area," Musk said in an interview with the Fox Business channel.

'Garbage' to blame Ukraine for massive X outage, experts say

Now, a new prime suspect has emerged as the pro-Palestinian hacktivist collective known as Dark Storm claims responsibility for taking X down. How this ties in with Musk telling Larry Kudlow during a Fox Business Network interview that the attack had been traced to “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area” remains unclear.

X Under Attack—Dark Storm Says It Was Behind Musk Platform DDoS

 

[Fabled Automatic]

Though a group has claimed responsibility, it's worth noting, if only out of curiosity, that this attack came a week after Trump paused offensive cyberoperations against Russia.

Leaves me wondering why Musk was so quick to blame Ukraine.

The Trump administration has publicly and privately signaled that it does not believe Russia represents a cyber threat against US national security or critical infrastructure, marking a radical departure from longstanding intelligence assessments.

Trump administration retreats in fight against Russian cyber threats