Hours after thousands of users of Xbefore Twitter, they will be prevented from using their services, the entrepreneur Elon Musk He affirmed that the social network was the victim of a massive cyber attack.
“There were (and there are still) a huge cyber attack against X,” Musk published. “They attack us every day, but this has been organized with many resources. A large coordinated group or a country is involved. We are tracking …”.
The millionaire made that statement by replicating a publication of another user (Dogedesigner) who suggested that the fall of X this Monday may be related to recent protests against the United States government efficiency department (Doge, directed by Musk) and vandalism acts against stores of the Tesla electric car manufacturer, also of its property.
Thousands of users reported problems accessing the platform on their mobile phones or the web on Monday. The peak of the fault, according to the reference site downdector.com, occurred at 14h00 GMT, when some 40,000 users reported an interruption of the service.
Subsequently, the businessman pointed out his accusatory finger against Ukrainian ‘hackers’, noting that the IP used by malicious actors was in that European country.
“We are not sure of what happened exactly, but there was a massive cyber attack to try to demolish the X system with IP addresses [Protocolo de Internet] originated in the Ukraine area»The businessman said in an interview with the Fox Business channel.
A test that experts say does not say much, due to the ease with which malicious actors with technical knowledge can falsify this information.
In communication with the BBC, Ciaran Martin, former chief of the National Cybersecurity Center of the United Kingdom, said that the attack that seemed to affect X was what is called a ‘service of denial of service’ or ddos for its acronym in English, a type of incuse where cybercriminals overload the computer resources of a website, causing legitimate users to be prevented from accessing the resource.
In that aspect, He considered that being a victim of this type of attack does not speak very well of the cybersecurity of x.
“It is not so sophisticated, it is a very old technique,” Martin told the BBC. “I can’t think of a company of the size and international prestige of X that has suffered an attack on a long time
Elon Musk gave no more evidence of his statements than Ukrainian cybercriminals were behind the attack, although it should be noted that the businessman has been a frequent critic of the president of that country, Volodymyr Zelensky, who recently also had a public fight in the White House with Donald Trump, under whose orders Musk leaders Doge.
Last year, Musk attributed without evidence to a computer attack the fall of X when an interview with Donald Trump was about to be transmitted. After Musk bought Twitter for 44,000 million dollars at the end of 2022, most employees renounced or were fired, which generated uncertainty about whether the platform could be kept safe and stable.