The notorious hacktivist group, Dark Storm, has claimed responsibility for a series of DDoS attacks that led to widespread outages on X this Monday. In response, the company has activated DDoS protection measures via Cloudflare.

Although X's owner, Elon Musk, did not explicitly confirm DDoS as the cause, he acknowledged a "massive cyberattack" affecting the platform. Musk noted the attack was substantial, suggesting involvement by a large group or even a nation-state.

Dark Storm's Involvement

Dark Storm, a pro-Palestinian hacktivist group formed in 2023, has a history of targeting entities in Israel, Europe, and the US. The group announced on their Telegram channel that they were executing DDoS attacks on X, providing screenshots and links to check-host.net as evidence.

Check-host.net is a tool used to verify website availability from global servers, often employed during DDoS attacks to demonstrate their impact.

Cloudflare's Defense Mechanism

To mitigate the attack, X has implemented Cloudflare's DDoS protection, which triggers a captcha challenge for suspicious IP addresses. This measure is currently visible on the help.x.com section, where all requests are met with a Cloudflare captcha.

Hacktivist Threats and Historical Context

Hacktivist groups have repeatedly shown their capability to disrupt major tech platforms using botnets and other resources. In 2024, the US indicted two individuals linked to the Anonymous Sudan group, which had successfully targeted companies like Cloudflare, Microsoft, and OpenAI, causing global service disruptions.

For further insights into the top MITRE ATT&CK techniques and defense strategies, explore our detailed Research section.

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