The social media platform X experienced waves of outages on March 10, which X owner and billionaire CEO Elon Musk attributed to a "massive cyberattack" linked to IP addresses originating in Ukraine.
"(W)e're not sure exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyberattack to try to bring down the ecosystem with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area," Musk told Fox Business.
Musk claimed in a post on X that the attack was carried out "with a lot of resources."
"Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved," he said.
Cybersecurity experts have expressed skepticism of Musk's claims. Cyberattacks of this type, known as denial of service (DDoS) attacks, can be carried out by small groups or individual hackers. DDoS attacks direct excessive amounts of traffic at a website in order to overload its servers, often causing disruptions to service.
An industry source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Reuters that much of the traffic targeting X could be traced to IP addresses in the U.S., Vietnam, Brazil, and other countries.
The amount of traffic coming from Ukraine was "insignificant," the source said.
Musk, who purchased X (then Twitter) in 2022, has a history of attributing technical glitches to cyberattacks. He also has a history of making inflammatory remarks and amplifying disinformation about Ukraine.
On the same day as the alleged cyberattack, Musk called U.S. Senator Mark Kelly a "traitor" for sharing details of his visit to wartime Ukraine. In his role as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), established by U.S. President Donald Trump, Musk has spearheaded the slashing of humanitarian aid to Kyiv and called to shut down U.S.-funded media outlets in Ukraine.
These outlets are a waste of "taxpayer money," responsible for "torching" up to a billion dollars in U.S. funds, Musk said.
Musk is currently listed as the world's richest man alive.
Alisa Yurchenko
