Musk Blames X Outages on Cyberattack, Experts Remain Skeptical
Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, suffered widespread outages on Monday, with thousands of users unable to access the site. Musk attributed the disruptions to a “massive cyberattack” involving “a large, coordinated group and/or a country.” However, cybersecurity experts remain skeptical of his claims, pointing out that such attacks can often be carried out by small groups or even individuals. Reports of outages peaked at around 10 a.m. ET, affecting up to 40,000 users, before gradually declining by the afternoon.
Musk later claimed in a Fox Business interview that the attack originated from IP addresses in the "Ukraine area." Cybersecurity researcher Kevin Beaumont countered this, stating that the attack involved a botnet using compromised devices worldwide, not just from Ukraine. Other experts, like Allan Liska of Recorded Future, explained that even if the attack appeared to come from Ukrainian IPs, the actual perpetrators could be anywhere, as hackers commonly use compromised machines to mask their true locations.
Denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, like the one affecting X, work by flooding a system with fake traffic to overwhelm its servers. While they can be disruptive, they are not necessarily sophisticated or linked to state actors. Nicholas Reese, a cyber operations expert at NYU, noted that such an attack didn’t seem to have a clear objective, saying, “Something like this was designed to be discovered… so to me that almost certainly eliminates state actors.”
Musk has a history of attributing technical problems to cyberattacks. In August 2024, when his conversation with Donald Trump on X was delayed, he suggested there was a “100% probability of DDoS attacks.” X has also experienced frequent glitches and disruptions since Musk’s 2022 takeover, following massive layoffs that reduced its workforce by 80%. The latest outage adds to the growing list of technical difficulties under his leadership.
Despite Musk’s claims, X has not provided any technical data to support the cyberattack theory. Experts caution that, without concrete evidence, it remains unclear whether Monday’s disruptions were caused by a deliberate attack or internal platform issues.
