X (formerly Twitter) experienced significant outages yesterday, which Elon Musk attributed to a cyberattack originating from Ukraine. 

Elon claimed that the attack involved IP addresses that were traced back to the Ukraine region, but provided no concrete evidence to support this. 

Over 40,000 outage reports were logged by DownDetector (a website that tracks and reports real-time outages and issues for various online services and platforms). 

Elon described the attack as a massive one, suggesting it might have involved a large group or even a country. He added, “X faces daily cyberattacks, but this one appeared particularly resource-intensive.”

The cybersecurity experts quickly refuted X head’s claims. 

Researcher Kevin Beaumont clarified that the attack likely involved a Mirai botnet (a network of compromised IoT devices such as, “cameras and routers” used to conduct large-scale DDoS - Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks, exploiting weak security like default passwords.), using compromised devices like cameras, and that the IP addresses came from various global locations, not just Ukraine. 

Other experts, including Allan Liska and Nicholas Reese, emphasized that tracing IP addresses doesn’t necessarily reveal the attack's origin, as compromised machines could be controlled from anywhere in the world. They also doubted that a state actor was behind the attack, given its brief duration and low strategic value.

Social media reactions were mixed, with some questioning, “Why Ukraine would target its own access to X?” Elon’s accusations also stirred controversy, as he has been vocal in his criticism of Ukraine and its government. 

 

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The outages on X added to a series of challenges for Elon, including protests against his Tesla brand and issues with his SpaceX ventures. Despite Elon’s claims, experts continued to highlight the complexities of cyberattacks and the difficulty in pinpointing their true origins without further technical data.