Social media platform X experienced intermittent outages on Monday, with owner Elon Musk attributing the disruption to an unusually powerful cyberattack. “We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved,” Musk stated in a post on X earlier in the day.
He did not elaborate on what he meant by “a lot of resources,” prompting skepticism from cybersecurity experts who noted that similar attacks — known as denial of service attacks — have often been carried out by small groups or individuals.
According to Downdetector, X saw service interruptions that at one point affected 39,021 users in the US, peaking around 10 a.m. ET. By 5 p.m., reports indicated the number had dropped to about 1,500 users.
An insider in the internet infrastructure industry said X had been hit by multiple waves of denial of service starting around 9:45 UTC. The individual, who requested anonymity due to lack of authorisation to speak publicly, said the attacks flooded the platform with rogue traffic, a common method used to overwhelm websites. Though not highly complex, such attacks can still cause major disruptions.
Later, Musk told Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow that the cyberattack stemmed from IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.
However, the industry source challenged Musk’s claim, stating that most of the rogue traffic appeared to originate from IP addresses in the United States, Vietnam, Brazil, and several other countries. The volume of traffic from Ukraine, they said, was “insignificant.”
Experts point out that denial of service attacks are notoriously difficult to trace, and IP addresses typically offer little meaningful insight into the true source of the attack.
Musk, who advises US President Donald Trump, has publicly criticised Ukraine’s continued defense against the Russian invasion. On Sunday, Musk said Ukraine’s front line “would collapse” without his Starlink satellite communications system, although he added he would not cut off Ukraine’s access to it.
With inputs from Reuters
