A hacktivist's manifesto: The irony of Dark Storm Team’s massive DDoS attack against X

Greetings, readers. I have a question I would like to provoke your thoughts with. Whenever we think of hacktivism, what comes to mind? You see, the spirit of hacktivism is enriched with a broad palette of ideological flavors. The answer is often as ambiguous as defining all the different hats that hackers wear.

You see, overarching themes that typify hacktivism in all this bold idealism have always been the same mantra where virtually every hacktivist finds their identity:

• Expose both government and corporate corruption
• Fight against censorship and defend digital privacy
• Support marginalized and oppressed communities
• Expose propaganda and disinformation

These are the first principles upon which every hacktivist is founded. But here’s the truth: how hacktivists act upon those principles determines how dedicated they are to living by them.

However, just as so-called religions of peace can become instruments of war within the power dynamic between those who lead for control and those who blindly follow, hacktivists often walk a fine line between digital resistance and manipulation. The pursuit of selfless idealism can, at times, mirror the very oppression they seek to dismantle, ultimately keeping people chained to the very system they aim to liberate them from.

If you haven’t noticed, I have a vested interest in hacktivist ideology. That’s because I am a hacktivist at heart. At the height of my hacking journey, hacktivism played a crucial role. However, if I had known then what I know now, the trajectory of that journey would have been very different.

For this reason, I have dedicated myself to the quest of finding the greatest hack.

Before we go deeper, let’s turn to current events.

Dark Storm Team disrupts X in massive DDoS attack

Everyone heard the viral news making the rounds on March 10th, after X (formerly known as Twitter) experienced a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, which disrupted access. The group claiming responsibility for the attack is a pro-Palestinian hacking group known as Dark Storm Team.

The downtime ebbed and waned: 45 minutes here, then a brief restoration of services, followed by another 45-minute disruption, and ended with several hours of additional downtime.

Paradoxically, the so-called noble plight of the hacktivists inadvertently terminated the service for other global pro-Palestinian supporters who were obstructed from reporting on the war in Gaza or pursuing activism, fundraising efforts, and real-time documentation of human rights violations.

Obviously, this wasn’t an intended consequence, but it does highlight the absurdity of disruptive cyberactivism, where the attackers aimed to challenge perceived oppressors and likely didn’t anticipate that such actions can also silence voices advocating for the very cause they claim to support.

Their modus operandi is to disrupt services primarily aimed at government, NATO connections, and anyone it believes supports Israel. Furthermore, the group has previously attacked hospitals in Israel, US airports, government websites, and industrial controls.

I also found that it was curious that the group put so much effort into making a spectacle of their DDoS attack protesting X, while also being a consumer of X. That’s not exactly how boycotts work, but I digress.

Hackers tend to forget that government websites are merely public resource pages and don’t actually affect those government agencies in the slightest since they have internal tools of their own.

But hey, it inconveniences civilians, not governments. It’s not outside the quest to say that just because a threat actor group has managed proficiency at ransomware campaigns and selling DDoS as a service, it doesn’t make them hacktivists.

One thing is clear: their lack of OPSEC has inevitably put them on the radar of French security researcher Baptiste Robert, who has de-anonymized a member of the group. He made waves late last year after unmasking the identity of hacktivist USDoD. I found the attack boring and rather childish because it left everything to be desired.

Take the adult entertainment industry, for example. It is a matter of public record that the industry is known for distributing Child Sexual Abuse Material, engaging in sex trafficking, rape, and using legal coercion tactics to censor anyone attempting to expose it.

Perhaps in some parallel universe unbeknownst to us, hacktivists have been dismantling those empires, hitting their paywalls, disrupting the flow of illicit funds by which this shadowy world grows.

But in this world, imagination is hamstrung. I wanted to know what ideologically motivated Dark Storm Team, so I reached out to the owner of Dark Storm Team, who goes by the name Glitch aka @MRHELL112 on Telegram. He responded with “hi” but declined to comment.

Unraveling paradoxical hacktivism

A question I have been asking myself for a few years now is: Why does Anonymous wear the mask of rebellion yet never seem to rise to the occasion and fight the real power, instead of merely opposing the adversaries we are allowed to hate?

I’m referring to the contrast between the ultra-elite class of individuals who possess disproportionate power over global finance, governments, political affairs, and societal structures. These are what I call the “puppet masters” who are innately responsible for the political Matrix and power structure we all live and function in.

Contrast this with the political adversaries we are all well acquainted with.

Therefore, if we are actually discussing revolutionary acts, where does DDoSing some public-facing websites play a role in exposing corruption again? That is because contemporary hacktivism is not adequately armed with the knowledge of how to challenge the power structure of the ruling class, least of all find a way to release the Epstein files.

A wise person once said that a revolution that’s brandable isn’t truly a revolution but rather just another way to keep people tethered to the illusion of resistance. Commercializing a movement is not the same as a genuine revolution that fundamentally challenges power structures. Once it can be packaged, marketed, or turned into a brand, it loses its radical edge and is ultimately absorbed into the very system it wanted to dismantle.

That is why Anonymous cannot succeed and why other hacktivism movements cannot move forward and assume new forms that are equipped to even touch the true puppet masters. Ultimately, when you think about it, this is controlled opposition because it keeps the system intact.

Real threats don’t get airtime.

This generation needs to start listening to Rage Against the Machine. Zack de la Rocha’s lyrics are deep. Hacktivism could also contribute something meaningful with the right inspiration.

In this same vein, I saw many comments on X responding to the breaking news about Dark Storm Team’s cyberattack and also in Dark Storm Team’s telegram group, where users seemed disinterested in the DDoS attack and were asking whether or not they would release the Jeffrey Epstein files.

If this were Mr. Robot, that would be a different story. Alas, the days of amazing hacktivism have long expired, and things that truly matter will never be a priority for mainstream hacktivists, and clout-chasers.

Surface level reactionary cycle of insanity

Modern hacktivism, especially branded groups like Anonymous, works within a sphere of controlled opposition. I say this because it thrives on reactive outrage rather than strategic subversion. In other words, it only moves in response to the latest news cycle.

Government overreach? Publicly declare you will attack them.A war crime revealed? Doxx someone.A corrupt billionaire? DDoS their website for a couple of hours.Flood the web with self-congratulatory tweets.

Lastly, if you measure the success of the attack by whether it made the news, you’ve failed. Moreover, none of these actions expose anything deeper than what the public already hints at.

This is what actually happens: they reinforce the same narratives we are already familiar with, such as left vs right, corporations vs people, state vs citizen. The consequences of this are quite tragic and are consequently why cyberactivism has become a failed idea: it keeps people engaged in surface-level conflict.

This means we never question who architects the system itself.

A continuum of failure

This is a serious question: hackers who claim to fight for freedom, are they actually just another cog in the machine? The way I see it, when digital resistance becomes predictable, it stops being a threat. The plot thickens when the illusion of rebellion keeps us bound to the system, where movements built on powerful ideals never truly take off.

• WikiLeaks gave the world undeniable proof of wanton corruption, yet no deep-state figures were ever held to account for any of it.
• Anonymous? Once the face of the greatest spirit of digital rebellion, now factioned off into a brand hijacked by mainstream political activism.
• LulzSec? Entertaining chaos, but ultimately a spectacle, not a strategy.

Hacktivists will only exist as a continuum of failed idealism, resulting in progressively worse outcomes until they realize that the cycle of failure is self-inflicted and will continue as long as they aim to react to every new wind of news.

Shaking trees is not the same as uprooting them.

“If this were Mr. Robot, that would be a different story. Alas, the days of amazing hacktivism have long expired, and things that truly matter will never be a priority for mainstream hacktivists, and clout-chasers.”

Subverting the cycle and building new tools

In order for hacktivism to become meaningful, mainstream hacktivists simply must stop regurgitating the legacy media and riding the “news vomit comet” and making reactionary videos declaring war, and compelling others to take sides, it would become apparent that the tools of our warfare do not involve theatrics with repetitive slogans. Because of this and more, nobody fears them, but we can expect the doxxing and the DDoS as retaliation against individuals who can see past the facade.

To date, no hacktivst group has:

• Mapped out deep-state networks – the real dark web of financiers, intelligence handlers, and power brokers. The actual dark web isn’t a network of illegal markets or underground forums. It’s an interconnected web of financiers, intelligence handlers, corporate fronts, and geopolitical chess masters.
• Exposed black budget operations where untraceable money funds activities beyond governmental oversight – (and I use that term lightly.) Trillions of dollars disappear into the abyss of untraceable funding that extend far deeper than the discretion of government oversight agencies.
• Exposed the real mechanisms of mass psychological control that extend beyond just mere data leaks and social media manipulation. I’m talking about the powers behind big tech algorithms feeding our overstimulated attention span with approved narratives. The public gets a steady diet of algorithmically approved narratives orchestrated to manufacture consent, reinforce divisions, and condition obedience to certain ideas.
• Dismantled the illusion of choice by showing how both political sides serve the same power structure. The actors may change, but the script remains the same.

One thing Jeffrey Epstein mastered to his advantage, along with every deep-state operator, both rogue and centralized, is that these actors within the political power structure built their own knowledge-based warfare (KBW) network. This infrastructure enables them to engineer information, intelligence, and psychological operations to maintain control.

Conversely, these same tools are available to anyone capable of building them, providing the ability to disrupt, manipulate, or control adversaries without resorting to conventional cyberattacks or physical combat. This approach moves beyond DDoS attacks, doxing campaigns, and leaks – shifting instead toward calculated, surgical system disruption.

Final thoughts

I have seen some come close, but in the quest for the greatest hack, my observations have led me to a realization: perhaps the greatest hack of all is breaking free from the illusion that hacktivists are resisting. That is, the hack we’ve all been waiting for at this time isn’t digital but ideological.

Unpacking this idea means breaking out of the system of controlled thought that keeps people believing they are resisting when they are only carrying out permitted narratives and actions, which only reinforces the system.

They believe they are resisting with such blind fanaticism that most cannot perceive anything to the contrary. Some will surely be conspiring even now to retaliate against me for writing this, which would only further demonstrate that the reactionary cycle is real. And just like that, the outrage will phase out, redirected back into the usual programming.

Others will continue taking to social media, clinging to the claim that they have free speech, while forgetting that it is the very system that gave them this belief – a system that allows them to operate within a controlled environment while their login details, posts, clicks, likes, bookmarks, and browsing habits are farmed, profiled, categorized, and marketed by advertising algorithms – all because they opted in voluntarily. It’s a convenient relationship.

These are the hallmarks of freedom.

Power to the peaceful, with love.