Blitz Bureau
WASHINGTON: Billionaire Elon Musk has hinted at Ukraine’s link with the cyberattack on X that led to massive global outage on his social media platform, an IANS report from New Delhi said.
It said that millions of users across Europe, North America, and Asia, including India, were unable to access the micro-blogging platform on March 10 for long periods. Speaking to media, Musk alleged that the massive cyberattack had digital traces originating from Ukraine, IANS reported.
“We’re not sure exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyberattack to try to bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area,” the report quoted Musk as saying in an interview with Fox News.
During the downtime, X stopped working completely, and more than 40,000 users experienced connectivity issues and were unable to post tweets or even open pages on the platform.
Confirming the outage as a cyberattack on X, Musk said he will trace those behind it. “We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing…,” said the Tesla and SpaceX CEO in a post. “There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” he said, adding that it is an attempt to silence him and his platform, even as he as an adviser to US President Donald Trump, continued to criticise Ukraine.
Recently, Musk also claimed that Ukraine’s front line “would collapse” without his Starlink satellite service, but assured he would not revoke access. He also amplified his claims by sharing a post, suggesting that the attack was part of a campaign against him.
The post linked the cyberattack to recent protests against Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and acts of vandalism against Tesla facilities. X was acquired by Musk in October 2022 for $44 billion.
