Elon Musk claims cyberattack on X came from 'Ukraine area'
What's the story
Billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk has alleged that his social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) was hit by a "massive cyberattack" originating from the "Ukraine area."
The service faced multiple outages on Monday, going offline intermittently and crashing again.
"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," Musk said during his conversation with Larry Kudlow on Fox News.
Hacker group
Dark Storm Team claims responsibility for attack
The pro-Palestinian hacker group Dark Storm Team has already claimed responsibility for a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack on X, according to a public Telegram channel.
The group is known for targeting countries and entities that support Israel's military actions in Gaza, which followed Hamas's October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
According to Downdetector's data, more than 40,000 users across the globe reported service interruptions on Monday.
Resource speculation
Musk suggests state involvement in cyberattack
Earlier, in a post on X, Musk claimed outages were caused by a powerful cyberattack.
"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," he said.
However, he didn't specify what he meant by "a lot of resources," prompting skepticism from cybersecurity experts, who noted that denial-of-service attacks have often been carried out by small groups or even individuals.
Service disruptions
X faces widespread outages amid cyberattack
X suffered widespread outages, with Downdetector reporting a peak of 39,021 affected users in the US by 10:00am ET. By 5:00pm, the number of reported disruptions had fallen to around 1,500.
A source within the internet infrastructure industry, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that X was targeted by multiple waves of denial-of-service attacks beginning at 9.45 UTC.
These attacks, which flood websites with rogue traffic, can be disruptive despite not being highly sophisticated.
Ongoing tensions
Musk continues to criticize Ukraine's war efforts
Musk's charges come amid tensions between the US and Ukraine following a disaster of a meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington, DC last month.
Following the public spat, Trump froze US arms deliveries to Ukraine and suspended all aid to the conflict-torn country last week.
Recently, Musk also claimed that Ukraine's front line "would collapse" without his Starlink satellite service but assured he would not revoke access.