Tech billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk on Monday claimed that X was hit by a “massive cyberattack” originating from the “Ukraine area.” The attack caused service disruptions and raised concerns about cybersecurity threats.
“We’re not sure exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyber attack to bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area,” Musk said during his conversation with Larry Kudlow on Fox News.
When Kudlow asked about the platform’s current status, Musk simply responded, “It’s up.”
Musk’s remark came after thousands of users reported issues with X early Monday morning. The platform experienced multiple outages throughout the day, going down, coming back up, and then crashing again.
Earlier, addressing the disruption, Musk posted on X: “There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing.”
He further responded to Doge Designer’s post which stated, “First, protests against DOGE. Then, Tesla stores were attacked. Now, X is down. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that this downtime is the result of an attack on X.”
According to the Associated Press, reports of outages surged early Monday, peaking at 6 am and again at 10 am Eastern, with over 40,000 users experiencing access issues, according to tracking site Downdetector.com. By the afternoon, reports had declined to the low thousands.
A prolonged outage lasting at least an hour began at noon, with the most severe disruptions concentrated along the US coasts. Downdetector.com noted that 56% of the reported issues were related to the X app, while 33% affected the website.