Thought Leadership
A group calling itself Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq says it brought down the decentralized social network for nearly 24 hours. Bluesky has not confirmed who was behind the attack and says no user data was compromised.
Decentralized microblogging platform Bluesky was hit by a distributed denial-of-service attack last week that caused intermittent outages lasting roughly 24 hours. The attack began late on April 15 (Pacific Time) and continued into the following day, disrupting feeds, notifications, threads and search for users across the platform.
Bluesky described the assault as sophisticated and issued a series of status updates as its engineers worked to contain the damage. The company said it ultimately succeeded in mitigating the attack and preventing a more extended outage.
A group called 313 Team, which also goes by the name Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq, claimed credit for the attack. The group describes itself as a pro-Iran hacktivist collective and says it has been active in the context of the ongoing conflict involving the United States, Israel and Iran.
Claims should be treated with caution
Security researchers note that groups of this kind frequently serve as cover identities for state-sponsored actors and have a track record of exaggerating their capabilities or falsely claiming responsibility for incidents. The 313 Team’s assertions have not been independently verified.
One detail stands out: the group announced ahead of the attack that it would last three hours. According to Bluesky’s own status updates, the disruption continued for approximately 24 hours, suggesting either that the attackers underestimated the impact or that their account of events is not reliable.
