Musk blames ‘IP addresses in Ukraine’ as X suffers cyberattack

Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly Twitter, has claimed that the cyberattack experienced by his social media platform had digital traces originating from Ukraine. 

On Monday, Downdetector, a website that tracks online outages, reported that over 40,000 users experienced issues accessing the platform, with many users unable to load posts and receiving an error message stating, “Something went wrong. Try reloading”.

In a post on X on Monday, Musk said the attack was well-coordinated and possibly state-backed.

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” he wrote.

“Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”

The billionaire also reiterated his claims during an interview on Fox Business, suggesting that the perpetrators may have been from Ukraine.

“We’re not sure exactly what happened but there was a massive cyber-attack to try and bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area,” he added.

Musk has previously been critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing him of prioritising power and financial interests over peace.

X has also faced similar disruptions in the past.

The platform crashed last year, and Musk blamed it on a “massive DDoS attack”.

However, a source at X later told The Verge there was no such attack.

The outage on X comes at a difficult time for Musk’s business empire.

On March 7, a SpaceX rocket exploded mid-flight, scattering debris near the Bahamas.

Also, Tesla is facing a wave of protests, with some owners dumping their vehicles.