{"id":256695,"date":"2025-03-11T14:13:03","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T14:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/11\/x-outage-who-are-hackers-behind-massive-cyber-attack-on-elon-musks-social-media-platform\/"},"modified":"2025-03-11T14:13:03","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T14:13:03","slug":"x-outage-who-are-hackers-behind-massive-cyber-attack-on-elon-musks-social-media-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/11\/x-outage-who-are-hackers-behind-massive-cyber-attack-on-elon-musks-social-media-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"X outage: Who are hackers ‘behind massive cyber attack’ on Elon Musk’s social media platform?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Elon Musk said his social media platform X was hit by a “massive cyber attack” on Monday – but who was behind it?<\/p>\n

Musk said IP addresses involved in the attack<\/a> <\/strong>were traced to locations “in the Ukraine<\/a><\/strong> area” but a hacking group called Dark Storm Team claimed it was responsible, in now-deleted Telegram posts.<\/p>\n

“Twitter has been taken offline by Dark Storm Team,” a post read on the group’s account, with a screenshot showing connection problems in a long list of countries.<\/p>\n

Here, Sky News looks at what we know about the hackers claiming responsibility for the attack.<\/p>\n

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\n Elon Musk claimed IP addresses in Ukraine were linked to the cyber attack on X. Pic: Reuters
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Who is Dark Storm Team?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The hacking group was founded in 2023 and has orchestrated cyber attacks against governments and organisations known to support Israel, according to cyber security firm Check Point.<\/p>\n

“They tend to go after those high-profile attacks,” said Muhammad Yahya Patel, a lead security engineer at Check Point.<\/p>\n

“Their main mantra is to cause disruption of services, largely related to government and NATO connections.”<\/p>\n

The group has previously targeted Israeli<\/a><\/strong> hospitals, US airports, government websites and other critical infrastructure services, according to cyber security site Security Scorecard.<\/p>\n

It added that Dark Storm Team does not tend to demand ransoms after attacks and the group is vocal about its political motivations.<\/p>\n

“We will attack any country […] that supports the occupying entity,” the group posted on Telegram last year, in screenshots shared by Security Scorecard.<\/p>\n

However, Dark Storm Team is not completely motivated by political beliefs – it also advertises itself as hackers-for-hire.<\/p>\n

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Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player<\/p>\n


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Ukraine, Musk, and an evicted Democrat<\/span>
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‘We have no relationship with Ukraine’<\/strong><\/p>\n

While Musk<\/a><\/strong> linked the cyber attack to IP addresses “in the Ukraine area”, this is disputed.<\/p>\n

A post from an X account claiming to be connected to Dark Storm Team read: “According to what Elon Musk said about the cyber attack on the X platform, its source is Ukraine.<\/p>\n

“It is an accusation without any evidence, and we have no relationship with Ukraine.”<\/p>\n

Cybersecurity experts also questioned the claim, saying it would be unusual for an attack like this to come out of one location.<\/p>\n

Read more:
Musk calls US senator ‘a traitor’ for visiting Ukraine<\/a>
What’s gone wrong at Musk’s Tesla?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

“The IP addresses are [usually] distributed globally from different locations,” said Mr Patel.<\/p>\n

After checking with Check Point’s team of cyber analysts, he added: “It looks like a general DDoS attack coming from different locations, different IP addresses.”<\/p>\n

A DDoS, or denial-of-service, attack is when hackers flood a system with attacks from all angles, targeting web servers, internal networks, or anything else they can access. The idea is to disrupt services enough that they become unavailable.<\/p>\n

After scouring the dark web, Mr Patel’s team also found no one else claiming responsibility for the attack on X, only Dark Storm Team.<\/p>\n

Musk, the internet and Ukraine<\/strong><\/p>\n

Musk caused alarm on Sunday when he claimed Ukraine’s “entire front line would collapse if I turned it [Starlink] off”.<\/p>\n

He made the remarks during a row with Poland’s foreign minister over the use of Musk’s satellite internet system.<\/p>\n

Last year, Ukraine said around 42,000 of the internet terminals were in operation across its military, hospitals, businesses and aid organisations.<\/p>\n

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Musk later said he would “never turn off [Starlink’s] terminals”.<\/p>\n

US negotiators pressing Kyiv for access to Ukraine’s critical minerals have raised the possibility of cutting Ukraine\u2019s access to the service, sources told Reuters in February.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elon Musk said his social media platform X was hit by a “massive cyber attack” on Monday – but who was behind it? Musk said IP addresses involved in the attack were traced to locations “in the Ukraine area” but a hacking group called Dark Storm Team claimed it was responsible, in now-deleted Telegram posts. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256696,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/e3.365dm.com\/25\/02\/768x432\/skynews-elon-musk-donald-trump_6840558.jpg?20250227064902","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2601,13320,2534,9447,5007,3200,2535,1732,4699,2291],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256697,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256695\/revisions\/256697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}