Elon Musk, owner of the social media platform X, stated that the recent widespread disruption on the platform was caused by a massive cyberattack. He explained that the platform faces daily attacks but described this particular one as involving significant resources.
Musk speculated that a “large and coordinated group or a country” might have been behind the attack, later revealing in an interview that the attack originated from an internet address in Ukraine.
The Hill reported on Monday, March 10, that the outage was noticed when DownDetector, a website monitoring platform disruptions, received tens of thousands of user reports from the U.S. regarding technical issues with X.
By 2 p.m. GMT on Monday, more than 8,000 outage reports had been registered from the UK, following a significant spike in reports earlier in the day. Many users trying to access their accounts or update pages were met with loading symbols instead.
Alp Toker, the director of NetBlocks, which tracks internet services, confirmed that the disruptions appeared to be caused by a cyberattack, particularly a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, which floods a site with massive amounts of traffic, disabling it.
Toker added that this was one of the longest outages for X, aligning with a typical DDoS attack aimed at the platform’s infrastructure. A source from the internet infrastructure industry also confirmed to Reuters that X had been facing multiple DDoS attack waves since 9:45 a.m.
After Musk’s statement about the cyberattack, the hacking group “Dark Storm” claimed responsibility for the disruption. This follows Musk’s earlier remarks in August 2024, where he linked technical issues on X to possible cyberattacks.
Since Musk’s acquisition of X in 2022, he has made significant changes to the platform, including firing senior executives and laying off about 3,500 employees, reducing the workforce by 80%. He has also asked remaining employees to return to the office fully.