Ukraine or Dark Storm Team: Who is behind X cyberattack? Here's what Elon Musk said (WATCH)

Tech billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk has claimed that X (formerly Twitter) was the target of an unprecedented cyberattack, allegedly originating from the "Ukraine area." The attack, which triggered widespread service disruptions, has raised alarms over potential state-backed cyber warfare.

"We’re not sure exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyber attack to bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area," Musk revealed during an interview with Larry Kudlow on Fox News. When asked about the platform’s current status, Musk’s response was brief yet reassuring- "It's up."

The outage, which unfolded early Monday morning, saw thousands of users encountering access issues on X, with the platform suffering repeated outages—crashing, recovering, and then going down again.

Addressing the issue on X, Musk posted, "There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing."

His statement came in response to a post by Doge Designer, who speculated on a possible connection between recent events, "First, protests against DOGE. Then, Tesla stores were attacked. Now, X is down. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that this downtime is the result of an attack on X."

Also read: Elon Musk claims X hit by 'massive cyberattack', suspects involvement of coordinated group or a nation

According to the Associated Press, reports of outages surged in the early hours of Monday, peaking at 6 am and again at 10 am Eastern Time, with more than 40,000 users encountering difficulties, as per tracking site Downdetector.com. By the afternoon, disruptions had subsided, though thousands still reported issues.

The widespread outage lasting over an hour began at noon, with the most severe disruptions affecting users along the US coasts. Downdetector.com data indicated that 56% of reported issues stemmed from the X mobile app, while 33% were tied to the website.

Dark Storm Team, the hacking group allegedly behind X cyberattack?

Shortly after Musk's confirmation, a hacking group known as "Dark Storm Team" claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack on the platform via a post on Telegram, Newsweek reported.

A post by Dark Storm Team on Telegram claimed responsibility for “taking Twitter offline." The group shared a screenshot of a real-time connectivity status page that displayed failed connection attempts from various locations around the globe.

According to a post on Telegram, the group carried out a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack.

Who is Dark Storm Team?

Founded in 2023, the group is known for its advanced cyber warfare strategies and successful breaches of high-security systems.

Orange Cyberdefense reported that the group has a pro-Palestinian agenda and recently pledged to launch a series of cyberattacks targeting government websites of NATO countries, Israel, and other nations supporting Israel.

Also read: X, formerly Twitter, faces outage: Posts and profiles fail to load sparking chaos