Musk blames X outage on cyberattack
reuters
Social media platform X faced outages affecting 12,000 users on Monday, following a cyberattack described by owner Elon Musk as a large, coordinated effort.
Social media platform X experienced significant outages on Monday, affecting nearly 12,000 users. The disruptions were attributed to a massive cyberattack, as confirmed by X's owner, Elon Musk. In a post on the platform, Musk stated, "There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. 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."
The cyberattack involved multiple waves of denial of service (DoS) attacks, which began around 9:45 UTC. These attacks work by flooding websites with excessive traffic, making them difficult or impossible to access. While DoS attacks are not typically sophisticated, they can cause major disruptions.
As of 1:46 pm ET, Downdetector reported that the outages had affected approximately 11,745 users in the United States. The number of outage reports initially surged to around 40,000, though it briefly declined before rising again to about 26,579.
X’s users experienced intermittent issues with accessing the platform, which led to significant frustration among many. The company's infrastructure has been a target of frequent cyberattacks, but this latest event appeared to be especially coordinated, given the scale of the disruption.
The attack on X marks another challenge for the platform, which has seen increased scrutiny since Elon Musk took over ownership. It remains unclear whether the attack was initiated by a state-sponsored group or another large entity, but it highlights ongoing cybersecurity risks for major digital platforms.
The incident is still under investigation, and more details are expected to emerge in the coming days as X works to restore full service to affected users.
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