Red Hot Cyber
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Olivia Terragni : 18 March 2025 10:47
The Dark Storm attack on X (formerly Twitter) has been significant for several reasons. The attack on March 10 2025 – a multi-layered Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) using a botnet – claimed by by the pro-Palestinian hacktivist group Dark Storm, caused a major global outage, affecting a large number of users worldwide and disrupting its services. “There’s been (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” Musk wrote, “We are attacked every day, but this one was done with many resources. Seems to be a large, coordinated group and/or a country involved”.
X had previously (in August 2024) already suffered a DDoS attack, which was analyzed by the Chinese cybersecurity firm Qi An Xin XLAB – a threat intelligence firm based in Hong Kong – and seen as a targeted attack using four Mirai master botnets.
The hacker group Dark Storm Team (DST) – reportedly created in September 2023, a few weeks before the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7 against Israel – claimed responsibility for the attack via Telegram, stating they had taken down the platform. The attack involved a botnet of compromised devices, including IoT devices like IP cameras and routers, to overwhelm X’s servers. While Dark Storm claimed responsibility, some experts questioned the attribution due to the complex nature of DDoS attacks, which can involve traffic from various global locations. This attack, highlights the importance of robust cybersecurity defenses, and the complex interplay between political motivations and profit-driven cybercrime, but such actions, contends Jesse William McGraw on Cyber News, point out how contemporary hacktivism, especially by groups like Anonymous, is a “controlled opposition” that reacts to news cycles without strategically challenging the underlying power structures.
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True change, the author suggests, requires dismantling the “puppet masters” who control global finance, governments, and societal structures, rather than simply engaging in surface-level conflicts like DDoS attacks. Jesse William suggests that real threats don’t get airtime and hacktivists need to start dismantling the real knowledge based warfare networks and focusing on the deeper mechanics of control to cause impactful change.
Hacktivists – told us Jesse Williams – are founded on several key principles such as exposing corruption and malfeasance, fighting censorship and defending digital privacy, supporting marginalized and oppressed communities (crucial) and countering propaganda and disinformation (vital action). The way hacktivists act on these principles reveals their true commitment to them and at the same time certain ideologies can be distorted to serve as tools for control. The paradox is that the pursuit of idealism can sometimes mirror the very oppression they aim to dismantle, ultimately trapping people within the system they seek to liberate. McGraw has a personal connection to this movement: during his hacking journey, hacktivism played a pivotal role. However, he tells us that if he had known then what he knows now, his path would have been different.
While Dark Storm attack was driven by geopolitical motivations, targeting entities perceived as supporting Israel, X is used by many pro-Palestinian supporters, paradoxically silenced voices advocating for their cause. How it could end: actions intended to challenge perceived oppressors can inadvertently harm those they aim to support. The contemporary hacktivism in challenging true power structures is limited and needs more impactful actions that go beyond symbolic gestures and instead target the root causes of systemic issues.
Jesse William recommends the new generation to start listening Zack de la Rocha’s lyrics from Rage Against the Machine as a source of deep inspiration for meaningful change.
“That is, the hack we’ve all been waiting for at this time isn’t digital but ideological”. _ Jesse William McGraw
The true freedom involves recognizing and breaking free from this ideological control, rather than engaging in superficial acts of resistance. This realization is seen as the “greatest hack” of all.
Olivia Terragni