Elon Musk revealed what allegedly caused his social media platform X to experience multiple outages on Monday, Mar. 10.
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In a post on his X account, Musk claimed that the social media platform was targeted” in a massive cyber attack.”
“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk stated. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing …”
Elon Musk further shared with Fox News Business that the X cyber attackers had “IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.” However, he didn’t share any further information.
“We’re not sure exactly what happened,” Musk explained. “But there was a massive cyber attack to try to bring down the X system, with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.”
DownDetector confirmed that issues on X began at approximately 6 a.m. ET. More than 20,500 users began to report problems with their accounts and feeds. Although it seemed the issues were resolved, nearly 40,000 users reported outages at 10 a.m. Outages continued until around 2 p.m.
Cybersecurity Experts Question Elon Musk’s Cyber Attack Claims
Meanwhile, cybersecurity experts told the Associated Press that just because the IP address had originated from an area in Ukraine doesn’t mean the cyber attacks were actually being conducted in Ukraine.
Security researcher Kevin Beaumont spoke out on Bluesky about Musk’s cyberattack claim. He stated it was “missing a key fact — it was actually IPs from worldwide, not just Ukraine.”
Allan Liska of the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future further spoke out. “Even if every IP address that hit Twitter today originated from Ukraine (doubtful),” Liska said. “They were most likely compromised machines controlled by a botnet run by a third party that could be located anywhere in the world.”
Eric Noonan, CEO of CyberSheath, told CNN it was “likely too early to tell” what caused the outages.
“One of the things that should always be taken with a grain of salt is any statements made in the short period of time, immediately after, or even in this case during an attack,” Noonan pointed out.