Elon Musk claims Ukraine link in cyberattack that caused outages on X

According to Elon Musk, a cyberattack was responsible for the outage on X, with potential involvement of 'a large, coordinated group and/or a country' with a lot of resources

Billionaire Elon Musk has blamed a "massive cyberattack" from Ukraine for repeated outages witnessed on his microblogging platform X on Monday.

 

According to media reports, the platform suffered intermittent outages throughout the day, going offline, restoring services, and crashing again.

 

Speaking to Fox Business, Musk said, "We're not sure exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyberattack to bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area."

 

Here's what happened on Monday

 

On Monday, X reported several outages with many users being unable to load their feed. Downdetector, a website that oversees outages on different sites and platforms, showed thousands of outages reports that were initially spiked. The number of reports was at 39,021 in the US by 10 am ET. However, it returned to normal for a few hours, and then a second surge was reported, which carried on throughout midday.

 

 

According to Musk, a cyberattack was responsible for the outage, with potential involvement of "a large, coordinated group and/or a country" with a lot of resources.

 

While he did not clarify what he meant by a "lot of resources," his remarks have come under scrutiny by cyber security experts, who have claimed that such acts, also known as 'denial of service' have often been carried out by individuals or small groups. He later claimed that the IP addresses of the hackers were traced to Ukraine.

 

According to a report by the Associated Press, cybersecurity experts dismissed Musk's claims that tracing the IP meant finding the definitive source of the attack. They also pointed out that this doesn't necessarily mean that an attack originated in Ukraine.

 

Some experts also cited the upcoming meeting between Ukraine and the United States over resumption of intelligence sharing. “It makes absolutely no sense for Ukrainian hackers to attack Elon Musk the day before a meeting between the United States and Ukraine in which they are attempting to get the United States to start sharing intelligence again, and provide aid and assistance, working towards a peace agreement that has been in question since the Oval Office visit,” the Atlantic Council’s Alex Plitsas told The New York Post.

 

Recently, Elon Musk claimed that Ukraine's front line "would collapse" without his Starlink satellite service. He later defended his stance, saying, "I literally challenged Putin to one-on-one combat over Ukraine, and my Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army."

 

"Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off. What I am sickened by is years of slaughter in a stalemate that Ukraine will inevitably lose," he said in a post on X.

 

Troubles for Musk continue

 

The recent outage on X has served yet another blow to the billionaire, who has been witnessing several blows to his businesses. His net worth has tumbled $132 billion since the beginning of this year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

 

On March 7, his SpaceX Starship exploded and its debris fell over the Bahamas and Florida. His electric vehicle venture, Tesla, has been facing widespread protests in the US over his role in the Donald Trump administration. Tesla sales in China and Germany have also plummeted, resulting in the falling of the stock to its lowest level in months on Monday.