Social media platform X experienced a significant outage on Monday, leaving thousands of users unable to access the service for several hours. X owner Elon Musk attributed the disruption to a large-scale and sophisticated cyberattack, suggesting the involvement of a well-coordinated group or even a nation-state.
The outage, which began around 9:45 UTC, saw a peak of over 39,000 affected users in the United States, according to outage tracking site Downdetector. An internet infrastructure source confirmed that X was hit by multiple waves of a denial-of-service (DoS) attack, which floods websites with excessive traffic.
Musk later claimed that the attack originated from IP addresses linked to Ukraine, but this assertion was challenged by experts who noted that rogue traffic came from multiple locations, including the United States, Vietnam, and Brazil.
Attributing the origins of cyberattacks is notoriously difficult due to the ability of attackers to mask their locations. While service has gradually improved, some users continue to report intermittent issues. X has not issued an official statement explaining the cause of the disruption.
Credit: TechEconomy (Text Excluding Headline)
