X, formerly known as Twitter, experienced a massive cyberattack on Monday and Tuesday, leading to widespread service disruptions across multiple countries, including the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
The incident, which saw two major spikes in user complaints, left many unable to access the platform, with reports of outages particularly concentrated on the U.S. coasts.
Elon Musk, owner of X, described the incident as a “massive cyberattack” and hinted at the possibility of foreign involvement, suggesting the attack may have originated from Ukraine.
However, cybersecurity experts have advised caution in drawing conclusions, as initial investigations indicate that the attack was carried out using a variant of the Mirai botnet, a tool often used in large-scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. This botnet employs compromised devices worldwide, making attribution difficult.
The cyberattack comes amid growing concerns over the security of major social media platforms and follows a series of challenges for Musk.
His leadership at X has faced scrutiny over policy changes, while his other ventures, such as Tesla, have recently struggled with declining sales and public backlash over aggressive cost-cutting measures.
The disruption at X has also led to increased conversations on rival social media platforms like BlueSky, where users expressed frustration over the outage.
While Musk has not provided technical details on the scale of the attack, cybersecurity analysts suggest that this incident underscores the vulnerabilities of major online platforms and the complexities in tracing the source of such sophisticated cyber threats.
Authorities and cybersecurity firms are expected to conduct further investigations to determine the true origin and intent behind the attack.
