WASHINGTON: Billionaire entrepreneur and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk claimed on Tuesday that his social media platform X (formerly Twitter) faced a major cyberattack originating from the Ukraine region.
On Monday, the platform experienced multiple outages, repeatedly going offline, restoring service, and crashing again.
“We’re not exactly sure what happened, but X was hit by a massive cyberattack, with IP addresses traced to the Ukraine area,” Musk said during a conversation with Larry Kudlow on Fox News.
Meanwhile, the pro-Palestinian hacker group Dark Storm Team claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack on X via a public Telegram channel. The group is known for targeting entities that support Israel’s military actions in Gaza, following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
Earlier, Musk addressed the situation on X, stating that the outage was caused by an intense cyberattack. “We get attacked daily, but this one involved significant resources. It was likely carried out by a large, coordinated group or even a nation,” he said.
However, Musk did not elaborate on what he meant by “a lot of resources,” leading some cybersecurity experts to express doubts. They pointed out that denial-of-service attacks are often executed by small groups or individuals rather than state-backed entities.
During the outage, Downdetector reported that by 10 AM ET, over 39,000 users in the US were affected, though disruptions declined to around 1,500 by 5 PM.
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A source in the internet infrastructure industry, speaking anonymously to Reuters, revealed that X was hit by multiple waves of denial-of-service attacks starting at 9:45 UTC. These attacks flood websites with rogue traffic, causing disruptions despite being relatively unsophisticated.
The outage occurred as Musk, who is an adviser to former US President Donald Trump, continued his criticism of Ukraine’s war strategy against Russia. Recently, Musk claimed that Ukraine’s front line would collapse without his Starlink satellite system but assured that he would not cut off access.
Defending his stance on Ukraine, Musk responded to critics on X, who accused him of targeting President Volodymyr Zelenskyy instead of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I literally challenged Putin to a one-on-one fight over Ukraine, and my Starlink system remains the backbone of the Ukrainian army,” Musk said.
“If I turned it off, their entire front line would collapse. What sickens me is the years of bloodshed in a stalemate that Ukraine is bound to lose,” he added.