Elon Musk hints at Ukraine link with massive cyberattack on X

Billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday suggested that Ukraine might be linked to the massive cyberattack on X that caused a major global outage on the social media platform.

Millions of users across Europe, North America, and Asia, including India, were unable to access X for long periods on Monday. According to outage tracking platform DownDetector, the disruption peaked at around 15:00 hours.

Speaking to the media, Musk claimed that the cyberattack showed digital traces originating from Ukraine.

“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,” Musk said in an interview with Fox News.

During the outage, X stopped working completely, and over 40,000 users reported connectivity issues and the inability to post or load pages.

Confirming the attack, Musk stated on Monday that the platform was targeted with significant resources, suggesting that either a large, coordinated group or a state actor was involved.

“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…,” Musk posted.

“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” he added, hinting that it might be an attempt to silence him and his platform, especially given his role as an adviser to US President Donald Trump and his recent criticism of Ukraine.

Musk previously claimed that Ukraine’s front line “would collapse” without his Starlink satellite service but assured that he would not revoke access.

He also amplified his claims by sharing a post suggesting that the attack was part of a broader campaign against him, linking it to protests against his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and acts of vandalism against Tesla facilities.

Musk acquired X in October 2022 for $44 billion.