X was seriously disrupted when the pro-Palestinian hacking group known as the Dark Storm Team launched a series of Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. The attacks caused mass outages in various countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, among others, impacting users and companies worldwide.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, visited the platform to confirm the attacks, speculating the scale of the operation suggested the handiwork of an organized group or maybe a country. “There was (still is) a gigantic cyberattack on X. We get attacked every day, but this was with substantial resources. Either a significant coordinated group and/or a country is at work. Tracing.” Musk wrote in a tweet.
Dark Storm Team, which was formed in 2023, specializes in high-profile hacks, mostly of systems which it considers pro-Israel. The attack is merely part of the bigger ideological stance of the group towards Israel and its allies, which qualifies them as a politically motivated group of hackers rather than run-of-the-mill cybercriminals. On Telegram, the group claimed responsibility for the attack on X, uploading screenshots of failed connection attempts to indicate the success of their DDoS attacks.
The attack at X came just a few months after Dark Storm Team made the headlines for threatening NATO countries, Israel, and other pro-Israel countries with further cyberattacks. They attacked U.S. infrastructure including airports in October of 2023 in an attempt to fuel tensions in the Israel-Hamas conflict.
The activities of Dark Storm Team are inspired by pro-Palestinian politics, with the group being infamous for working in cooperation with other groups with the same political objectives, for instance, pro-Russian groups. Their attacks typically take the form of DDoS attacks, which send excessive traffic to online platforms, rendering them unusable. Although their victims have been various, the group always attacks for motives in line with their political interests, with a particular focus placed on attacking pro-Israel platforms and systems.
The outage at X affected not just ordinary users, but also had spillover effects for companies relying heavily on the platform for communications and advertising. Experts are already warning that the incident points to a new trend of politically motivated cyber warfare in which hacktivists use digital tools for ideological purposes. Cybersecurity experts have been concerned with the vulnerability of such large platforms to such attacks, especially in the face of the political and geopolitical stakes involved.
“Those kinds of cyberattacks are a stark reminder of the growing role digital warfare is playing in global conflicts,” said Dr. Emma Harding, a cybersecurity expert. The dangers threatening platforms like X, as well as the security of countries, are real and necessitate more preventive measures.
The attack on X is just part of a chilling trend of politically motivated online attacks in Western nations. With tensions escalating in much of the world, the line between conventional military conflict and conflict in cyberspace continues to break down. All actors are competing to respond to these emerging threats, with many arguing the tactics for defending in the digital sphere must be rapidly updated to keep up with the nature of modern geopolitics.
The power of digital platforms like X to influence opinion and speak to the general population has made them the most targeted by those groups interested in shaping political outcomes. This attack, as well as the preceding attacks at NATO and Israel, demonstrate how cybersecurity converges with international relations in such a sophisticated manner.
