Elon Musk Claims 'Massive Cyberattack' On X Originated From 'Ukraine Area'

Billionaire and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) chief Elon Musk on Tuesday claimed that his social media platform X was hit by a "massive cyberattack" originating from the "Ukraine area".

The platform experienced repeated outages throughout Monday, intermittently going offline, being restored, and then crashing again.

Photo Credit: AP/PTI

"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.

When asked about the platform's status, Musk replied, "It's up."

The pro-Palestinian hacker group Dark Storm Team has claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack on X, according to a public Telegram channel.

The group is known for targeting nations and entities that support Israel's military actions in Gaza, which followed Hamas' attack on Israel on 7 October 2023.

Earlier, in a post on X, Musk stated that the 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.

He did not clarify what he meant by "a lot of resources", leading to scepticism from cybersecurity experts. They pointed out that "denial of service" attacks have often been carried out by small groups or even individuals.

X suffered widespread outages, with Downdetector reporting a peak of 39,021 affected users in the US by 10 am ET. By 5 pm, the number of reported disruptions had dropped to approximately 1,500.

A source within the internet infrastructure industry, speaking anonymously to Reuters, said that X was targeted by multiple waves of denial-of-service attacks starting at 9.45 UTC. These attacks, which overwhelm websites with rogue traffic, can be disruptive despite not being particularly sophisticated.

The outages come as Elon Musk, who serves as an adviser to US President Donald Trump, continues to criticise Ukraine's war efforts against Russia.

Recently, Musk claimed that Ukraine's front line "would collapse" without his Starlink satellite service but assured that he would not revoke access.