Elon Musk\u2019s X was hit by waves of outages earlier Monday, which the billionaire claims was due to a cyberattack with IP addresses originating in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not sure exactly what happened,\u201d Musk said during a Fox Business interview Monday afternoon. \u201cBut there was a massive cyberattack to try to bring down the X system, with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk did not give any further details about the origin of the attack, including whether he believes it was connected to the Ukrainian government. It is possible to mask IP addresses and make it seem as though the traffic is coming from elsewhere, and spoofing locations is often offered by hackers-for-hire.<\/p>\n
According to outage tracking site DownDetector, the problems began around 6 a.m. ET when up to 20,538 users reported problems. The issues temporarily died down before nearly 40,000 users reported outages at 10 am. Outages reported on DownDetector began to drop around 2 p.m. ET and trailed off throughout the afternoon.<\/p>\n
Many users on DownDetector said the platform wouldn\u2019t load, and the outage appeared to be global, according to DownDetector\u2019s international sites. During the Fox Business interview, which aired during the 4 p.m. ET hour, Musk said platform was working again.<\/p>\n
DownDetector data is self-reported, meaning it doesn\u2019t fully represent the outage\u2019s scale. CNN has reached out to X, though the company doesn\u2019t usually respond to press inquiries.<\/p>\n
Musk posted on X early Monday afternoon that he believed \u201ca large, coordinated group and\/or a country is involved,\u201d though the source of motivation behind the attack wasn\u2019t confirmed. Musk also replied \u201cYes\u201d to a post on X suggesting people are trying to silence the billionaire and his platform, although no further details about the service disruption, including whether it was caused by a targeted attack, have been revealed.<\/p>\n
Eric Noonan, CEO of cybersecurity provider CyberSheath, told CNN that it\u2019s likely too early to tell if an attack caused the issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things that should always be taken with a grain of salt is any statements made in the short period of time, immediately after, or even in this case during an attack,\u201d Noonan said.<\/p>\n
Musk has a history of attributing technical snafus to cyberattacks. When his conversation with Donald Trump on X started 42 minutes late in August 2024, he said there was a \u201cprobability\u201d of an attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven the prominence of this conversation, there was of course a 100% probability of DDOS attacks,\u201d Musk posted on the social media platform at the time. DDOS stands for \u201cdistributed denial-of-service,\u201d which involves overwhelming servers with fake traffic to cause service disruptions. But Florida Governor Ron Desantis\u2019 presidential campaign announcement on X in 2023 was also marred by technical difficulties.<\/p>\n
Ransomware attacks have been more common than DDOS attacks in recent years because they\u2019re usually financially motivated, according to Noonan. DDOS, however, is typically used to cause a disruption, which also makes confirming the source of these types of attacks more difficult.<\/p>\n
Musk implemented widespread cuts and major changes to X after acquiring the popular social media platform, then called Twitter, in 2022. He immediately laid off top executives and, within days of acquiring X, cut 3,500 people, or around half the platform\u2019s workforce. He laid off 80% of the staff in total and required the remaining employees to return-to-office full time.<\/p>\n
The platform has experienced a series of glitches and disruptions since the acquisition.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a tough day for the businesses owned by Musk, who is also the head of Trump\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). On Monday, Tesla shares fell 15% on Monday, erasing its gains since Trump\u2019s November 2024 election.<\/p>\n
Source: CNN<\/strong> Elon Musk’s X was hit by waves of outages earlier Monday, which the billionaire claims was due to a cyberattack with IP addresses originating in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n–Agencies<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"