X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, was hit by a major cyberattack on Monday, leaving tens of thousands of users unable to access the site. Elon Musk, the owner of X, confirmed the attack in a post on the platform, stating, “There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X.”
The outage began early Monday, affecting users across Asia, Europe, and North America. Downdetector, a website that tracks online service disruptions, recorded over 40,000 reports of issues at the peak of the outage. Most complaints came from users attempting to access X through smartphones, but web users also experienced difficulties.
Musk did not provide evidence to support his claims but suggested that a cyberattack was responsible for the widespread service disruption. This is not the first time he has made such a claim—last year, he blamed a cyberattack for crashing the platform just before a planned interview with former U.S. President Donald Trump.
In his latest post, Musk included a message from the X account DogeDesigner, which mentioned protests against the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an agency that Trump had assigned to Musk. The post also referenced vandalism at Tesla stores and suggested that the cyberattack might be linked to growing hostility towards Musk.
Jammies, another X account, questioned the scale of the attack, posting, “It would take a lot of (money) to do an attack of this magnitude. Who has the resources to fund this?” Musk also noted that such an attack would require significant resources, hinting that a nation or a well-organized group could be responsible.
Since Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022, the platform has undergone major changes, including mass layoffs that raised concerns about its ability to maintain security and stability.
