Pro-Palestinian Hacker Group Took Responsibility for X Cyber Attack – Before Elon Musk Blamed Ukraine

X – the global social media platform, previously known as Twitter, owned by White House adviser Elon Musk – experienced a global outage on Monday that the billionaire claimed was caused by hackers in Ukraine, even though another group had already taken credit for the disruption.

The cyber attack lasted several hours and affected Android and iOS apps, causing numerous web client problems.

“We’re not sure what happened… There was a massive cyber attack to try and bring down the X system – ah – with ah – IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area,” Elon Musk told Larry Kudlow on Fox News. 

But some of the largest-scale hacks are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which involve hackers activating malware unknowingly installed on user computers and devices over a wide area. IP addresses are not a “smoking gun” for the origin of a cyber attack, and IP addresses are easily spoofed. 

The services likely used to carry out these attacks target the “Internet of Things” (IoT) to turn them into zombies. IoT includes anything connected to the web that isn’t a PC, tablet, or smartphone, such as routers, security cameras, thermostats, streaming media boxes, and even home appliances. 

Before Musk spoke to Kudlow, the hacker group Dark Storm Team had already claimed responsibility for the attack on its Telegram channel, saying the offensive was due to the US’s stance on the war in Gaza, as reported by Forbes.

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Dark Storm was founded in 2023 and primarily targets Israel and NATO Alliance countries, according to the Cyber Intelligence Bureau of Epidemiology Lab. Their primary goal is to exploit political and religious differences in support of a Palestinian state and the Palestinian people.

The pro-Palestinian cybercriminals are in a coalition with approximately five other hacker groups, including the Russia-based and Kremlin-backed Killnet and the Russia-based Bluenet Russia. They are self-financed and offer hacking services for hire. Since its formation, the group has also targeted websites in Egypt, India, Ukraine, Brazil, Kenya, and the United Arab Emirates.

Other members of the Dark Storm Team coalition include Anonymous Sudan, Ghosts of Palestine, and SN_BLACKMETA, which is based in Sudan, according to the Lab.