What is Anonymous Sudan about? The mysterious group behind latest X outage

Anonymous Sudan emerged as the hacktivist group behind the widespread outage that impacted social media platform X on Tuesday, August 29, when 2,700 incidents of technical issues were reported by people in the United Kingdom, United States, and other parts of the world.

As uncertainty and confusion ensued on the platform, Anonymous Sudan took to Telegram to mock Elon Musk over his recent rebranding of X, formerly known as Twitter. “Elon Musk has not changed the bird’s logo on this page yet," the group said after orchestrating its latest high-profile cyberattack. 

During the two-hour outage, the group demanded the SpaceX CEO to launch his Starlink satellite service in Sudan. "Make our message reach to Elon Musk: 'Open Starlink in Sudan'," the hackers said. In the past, Anonymous Sudan has temporarily brought down Microsoft’s Outlook email service, social media platform Reddit, and fanfiction website Archive of Our Own, according to the Evening Standard.  

But who is Anonymous Sudan?

Contrary to its name, cybersecurity experts have deduced that the hacking group operates from Russia and is run by an ecosystem of cyber criminals. After surfacing in January, the group claimed that it hailed from Sudan. However, researchers from cybersecurity firm TrueSec were quick to dismiss this, and said that the group was a coterie of Russian hacktivist collectives like KillNet and UserSec.

The firm noted that the collectives frequently collaborated to disseminate pro-Kremlin propaganda and target Ukraine's Western allies. One of the major clues of the group's place of origin is the platform it uses. Anonymous Sudan has a wide presence on Telegram, a messaging app popular among Russian hackers.

“It’s likely that someone in the Russian government, or the circle around President Vladimir Putin, is financing Anonymous Sudan’s operations and pays KillNet to conduct the attacks,” said Mattias Wåhlén, a TrueSec threat intelligence expert. Aside from cyberattacks on Outlook, Reddit, and Archive of Our Own,  Anonymous Sudan is said to have also targeted nations such as Australia, Scandinavia, and Israel in recent years.