X out of action

“Massive cyberattack: Musk blames Ukrainians

X boss Elon Musk: "X is attacked every day, but this time large amounts of resources were involved."(Bild: APA/AFP/POOL/KEVIN LAMARQUE)

According to Elon Musk, the massive technical disruptions to his short message platform X had to do with a "massive cyberattack". The tech billionaire and close advisor to US President Donald Trump immediately blamed hackers from Ukraine in a television interview.

The hacker attack was due to IP addresses in Ukraine, Musk told Fox Business (see video below). The 53-year-old entrepreneur made his comments after thousands of users reported problems accessing X for several hours. According to industry sources, X was temporarily disabled in several waves. These were so-called denial-of-service attacks, in which websites are deliberately flooded with unwanted data traffic. This can lead to considerable disruption.

Cybersecurity specialists questioned Musk's statements about the size of the group and its origin. Normally, smaller groups or individuals used the method of denial of service. An insider said that the IP addresses responsible for the attacks came from the USA, Vietnam, Brazil and other countries. The proportion from Ukraine was insignificant. 

Musk sees connection to protests against his agency
Musk published the information about the cyberattack as a comment on another post. Without providing any evidence, this post made a connection between the demonstrations against Musk's US government department for government efficiency (Doge), "attacked" Tesla businesses and the current glitch on X. Musk had recently supported US President Trump's election campaign with hundreds of millions of dollars and is considered an important whisperer for the Republican.