X, formerly known as Twitter, experienced widespread outages on Monday, leaving thousands of users unable to access the platform. Service disruptions began early in the day and continued intermittently, with error messages preventing logins and navigation.
Downdetector, a service monitoring platform outages, recorded a peak of 40,000 complaints from affected users.
Elon Musk, the owner of X, confirmed the outages were caused by a large-scale cyberattack. In a post on X, he stated, “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.”
Musk also engaged with speculation about the attack’s motives, responding affirmatively to a claim that “they want to silence you and this platform.”
Shortly after Musk’s statement, a hacker group known as Dark Storm Team claimed responsibility for the attack. The group, reportedly active since 2023, has been linked to cyber warfare and high-profile security breaches. In a post on Telegram, Dark Storm Team stated, “We took Twitter offline,” alongside a screenshot of failed connection attempts from various global locations.
Cybersecurity experts at Orange Cyberdefense have identified Dark Storm Team as a pro-Palestinian hacker group known for targeting NATO countries, Israel, and other nations backing Israel. The latest attack adds to growing concerns over cyber threats aimed at disrupting major online platforms and communications infrastructure.
X has yet to release an official statement detailing the full extent of the attack or potential security measures being implemented to prevent future disruptions.
