A significant cyberattack temporarily disrupted X, a social media platform owned by Elon Musk, on Monday. The source of the attack appeared to be linked to the Ukraine region, though details remain unclear.
During an interview with Fox News host Larry Kudlow, Musk confirmed that the attack led to intermittent outages. “We’re not sure exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyber-attack to try to bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area,” Musk stated. Kudlow inquired about the platform’s current status, to which Musk confirmed that it was operational again.
Reports from Downdetector indicated that user complaints began around 6 AM Eastern Time, with an initial peak of approximately 21,000 reports. After seeming to stabilize, another surge occurred at 10 AM, involving over 40,000 users. This was followed by further disruptions at 11 AM, with over 35,000 reports before the service appeared to normalize around 1:30 PM.
On Monday afternoon, Musk tweeted, “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…” Users experienced intermittent access issues throughout the day.
Meanwhile, Newsweek reported that a hacker group known as “Dark Storm” claimed responsibility for the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. Check Point Research, a cyber threat analysis team, noted that “Dark Storm” is a pro-Palestinian group that had been inactive for some time. The group has previously targeted nations such as the United States, Ukraine, the UAE, and Israel.