Tech mogul believes attack, which left 40,000 without access to site, orchestrated by ‘large group’ or ‘a country’.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk says his social media platform, X, has been targeted in a “massive cyberattack” after the service went down, leaving tens of thousands of users unable to access their accounts.
Complaints about outages spiked on Monday at 10:00 and 14:00 GMT, and more than 40,000 users were unable to access the platform, according to the tracking website Downdetector.com.
Taking to X, Musk posted that the platform was targeted on a daily basis but the latest attack was “done with a lot of resources” and had been orchestrated by “a large, coordinated group and/or a country”. He did not provide evidence for his claim.
The worst disruptions occurred along the United States coasts, according to Downdetector.com, which said 56 percent of the problems were reported for the X app while 33 percent were reported for the website.
In March 2023, the social media platform, then known as Twitter, experienced a host of glitches for more than an hour as links stopped working. Some users were unable to log in, and images failed to load for others.
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and promptly laid off the majority of its staff. Repeated technical issues have followed as well as a notable shift to the right in the discourse on the site.
Anger
Musk, one of US President Donald Trump’s most influential allies, posted his accusations in response to another post drawing links between the outages and recent controversies, including his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk and his team at DOGE were tasked by Trump to slash the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy. To date, about 25,000 workers have been fired, and another 75,000 have taken a buyout out of the 2.3 million civilian federal workforce.
The billionaire’s political activities have sparked widespread anger across the US, including protests at Tesla dealerships and fires set at the Tesla factory outside Berlin and Tesla charging stations.
In addition to overseeing the firing of thousands of federal workers, Musk has also played a primary role in the cancellation of more than 83 percent of all programmes at the US Agency for International Development.
On Sunday, Musk waded into geopolitics, saying the Ukrainian army’s “entire front line would collapse” without his Starlink internet service.
Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski hit back, saying Poland, which pays Ukraine’s Starlink costs to help repel Russia’s invasion, might have to seek alternative suppliers.
Musk later lashed out at Sikorski himself, posting: “Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”