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Elon Musk's social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), encountered a substantial cyberattack on Monday, leading to multiple outages throughout the day. This incident left thousands of users unable to access the platform, raising important questions about the site's security.
Outage Timeline
According to Downdetector, which monitors online service disruptions, users began experiencing issues early in the day:
- 10:00 AM ET: Nearly 40,000 users report problems.
- 11:30 AM ET: Reports decrease to 28,000 users, but access remains shaky.
- 2:00 PM ET: Approximately 22,000 users still encounter issues.
During these outages, many users faced a loading icon while trying to refresh their feeds on both desktop and mobile.
Musk Attributes the Incident to a Large-Scale Cyberattack
Shortly after service began to resume for some users, Elon Musk took to X to address the situation, asserting that the platform had experienced a significant cyberattack.
"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." – Elon Musk
While Musk did not provide specific evidence, Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, indicated that the disruptions appeared to resemble a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, where attackers inundate a website’s servers with excessive traffic to overwhelm and crash them.
Ongoing Outages Since Musk’s Acquisition
Since Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of X in 2022, the platform has encountered several large-scale outages, including incidents in December 2022 and July 2023. Cybersecurity experts believe Monday’s attack was one of the longest in duration since Musk's takeover.
"This is among the longest X/Twitter outages we've tracked, and the pattern is consistent with a denial-of-service attack targeting X's infrastructure at scale." – NetBlocks
Musk has previously asserted that X has been the target of cyberattacks, though none have been officially confirmed.
The Aftermath: Users Seek Alternatives
As X remained down, users turned to alternative platforms like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Reddit to discuss the unfolding situation.
The outage also significantly affected NFL fans, coinciding with the first day of the league’s free agency tampering window at 12 PM ET—a critical time when fans depend on X for trade and signing updates.
With no official statement from X, speculation continues regarding the cause of the attack. Although service has been restored, many users are still facing connectivity issues.
For now, X users find themselves waiting for answers, refreshing their feeds in frustration.