Elon Musk Points to Ukraine-Linked “Cyberattack” After Global X Outage

Elon Musk’s social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, suffered widespread outages Monday, leaving users worldwide unable to access the service. Musk quickly blamed the disruption on a “massive cyberattack” and suggested—without evidence—that the culprits might be linked to Ukraine.

In a Fox Business interview, Musk said the attack appeared to originate from “IP addresses in the Ukraine area,” but he stressed this was a suspicion, not a confirmed fact. “We don’t know exactly what happened,” he admitted, while claiming the attackers tried to “take down the entire X platform.”

While details remain scarce, cybersecurity experts speculated the outage could be tied to a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack—a common tactic where hackers overwhelm a website with fake traffic to crash it. Reports of such attacks have surged globally, often fueled by networks of hacked devices.

Meanwhile, the outage reignited debates about Musk’s controversial 2023 decision to rebrand Twitter as “X.” Despite Musk’s insistence on abandoning the Twitter name, users flooded the platform with posts like “My Twitter isn’t working!” during the crash. Over 1 million posts used the phrase “My Twitter,” compared to just 360,000 mentioning “My X.”

The rebrand has struggled from the start: The Twitter name still appears in URLs, and analysts argue the abrupt change alienated users. Recent reports suggest some have migrated to rival platforms like Bluesky, particularly after major events like the U.S. presidential election.

X’s official support team has yet to address the outage publicly. When users asked Grok, X’s AI chatbot, for answers, it echoed theories about a DDoS attack but offered no concrete details.

Musk has long criticized Ukraine’s government, though he stopped short of accusing it directly here. For now, the platform’s loyal users—many still clinging to the Twitter identity—are left waiting for answers.

What to know:

• Musk claims X was hit by a “sophisticated cyberattack” possibly tied to Ukraine. No proof has been shared.
• Users rejected the “X” rebrand during the outage, overwhelmingly using “Twitter” in posts.
• DDoS attacks (crashing sites with fake traffic) are rising globally, often powered by hijacked devices.