On Monday, social media platform X experienced intermittent outages, with its owner, Elon Musk, attributing the disruption to a substantial cyberattack.
Musk stated, “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,” in a post on X earlier that day.
The specifics of what Musk meant by “a lot of resources” were not elaborated upon, prompting skepticism from cybersecurity experts. They noted that denial of service attacks, which target websites by overwhelming them with traffic, have often been orchestrated by smaller groups or individuals.
According to Downdetector, X experienced outages that affected 39,021 users in the United States at the peak of the disruption around 10 am ET. By 5 pm, this number had decreased to approximately 1,500 users who were still unable to access the platform.
An anonymous source in the internet infrastructure sector reported that X was subjected to multiple waves of denial of service attacks beginning at around 9:45 UTC. This individual requested anonymity, as they weren’t authorized to discuss the situation publicly.
Denial of service attacks involve overwhelming targeted websites with illegitimate traffic. While these attacks may not be technically advanced, they can lead to significant service interruptions.
Musk further elaborated in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Larry Kudlow, claiming that the cyberattack originated from IP addresses in the Ukraine region.
However, the industry source challenged Musk’s assertion, indicating that a large volume of the harmful traffic directed at X could be traced back to IP addresses in the United States, Vietnam, Brazil, and several other countries, suggesting that the amount of traffic from Ukraine was “insignificant.”
Tracing the origins of denial of service attacks is notoriously challenging, and the IP addresses involved often provide little insight into the true perpetrators.
Musk has been vocal in criticizing Ukraine’s ongoing efforts to resist the Russian invasion, aligning with remarks made by former U.S. President Donald Trump, for whom he serves as an adviser. Last Sunday, Musk claimed that without his Starlink satellite communications service, Ukraine’s frontline “would collapse,” although he affirmed he would not cut off access to it.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
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