Musk: Ukraine-based cyberattack may have caused X platform outage

Photo : AFP

Elon Musk’s social media app X stopped working for many people on Monday, March 10. The app and website were down for about two hours. Soon after, Musk said a huge cyberattack might have caused the problem.

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“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked every day, but this one was very strong. A big group or even a country may be behind it,” Musk wrote on X.

The trouble started at around 3:15 PM IST. Many users could not open the app or website. Downdetector.com, a website that checks online problems, said over 40,000 people reported issues.

Later, Musk spoke to Fox and said, “We don’t know exactly what happened, but a massive cyberattack tried to take down the X system. The attack came from IP addresses linked to the Ukraine area.” However, Musk did not share any proof for this claim.

One day before this, Musk had posted something about Ukraine that made many people angry. On March 9, he wrote, “My Starlink system is the main support for the Ukrainian army. Their front line would fall if I turned it off.” Some people think this statement upset Ukraine-based hackers, and they may have attacked X in response.

Experts believe the attack was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack. This means hackers send too much traffic to a website or app, making it slow or stop working. Even though X started working again after two hours, Musk said the attack is still happening. Reports on Downdetector.com also show that some users are still facing problems.

Right now, no cybersecurity experts or government agencies have confirmed Musk’s claims. But his statement has made people talk more about the growing problems between him and different countries.