Bluesky confirms big DDoS attack caused 24-hour outage
Bluesky confirmed that a DDoS attack caused a 24-hour outage starting August 16, 2026, affecting users globally.
The company did not disclose the attackers' identity, the origin of the malicious traffic, or whether specific DDoS infrastructure was used. It also did not say how many users were affected, but stated that it has upgraded its defenses and is continuing to monitor the situation.
According to TechRadar, security researchers discussing the incident on the IFIN public forum linked the attack to The Islamic Cyber Resistance in Iraq-313 Team, an Iran-backed threat actor that also claimed responsibility for a similar DDoS strike on GitHub. Their initial research suggests the attackers used DDoS-for-hire infrastructure based on DiamWall, which appears to rely on IP addresses supplied by a China-based reseller. Researchers noted this does not imply the attack traffic originated from China or that Chinese entities were involved.
This is not the first time the 313 Team has been associated with DDoS attacks on similar services, including Spotify and Ubuntu, the report said.