Elon Musk’s platform, X, faced significant outages earlier this week, which Musk attributed to a cyberattack originating from IP addresses in Ukraine. During a Fox Business interview, he expressed uncertainty about the exact cause but indicated the attack was a concerted effort to disrupt the system. While he didn’t clarify if the Ukrainian government was involved, he suggested that a large group or state might be behind the incident, although the motive remained undisclosed.
DownDetector reported that the service disruptions began around 6 am, with over 20,000 users experiencing issues, which peaked later with nearly 40,000 complaints by 10 am. The outages appeared to be worldwide, affecting users globally, though by afternoon, the number of reports started to decline. Musk later announced that services had been restored, yet the figures from DownDetector are self-reported, possibly underrepresenting the extent of the outages.
Musk alluded to the idea that powerful groups could be attempting to stifle his influence and that of his platform, responding affirmatively to suggestions on X that there may be a coordinated effort against him. However, experts like Eric Noonan, CEO of CyberSheath, cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the cause, urging a more cautious approach to assessing the situation immediately following an event.
Musk has previously suggested that technical issues on X could be due to cyberattacks. For instance, when a key conversation with Donald Trump was delayed, he raised the likelihood of being targeted by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks flood a system with artificial traffic, causing service interruptions.
As Musk has made extensive cuts following his acquisition of X, leading to significant job losses and structural changes, the platform has seen increased glitches. This recent wave of outages contributes to a pattern of operational challenges since Musk took over the company in 2022.
On the same day as the attack, Musk’s other enterprise, Tesla, incurred a 15% drop in stock value, reversing gains made since Donald Trump’s re-election bid in late 2024. Overall, it has been a tumultuous period for Musk, grappling with both the challenges of X and the fluctuations in Tesla’s market performance.