Elon Musk’s social media platform X has experienced multiple outages, which cybersecurity experts believe to be the result of a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack.

Musk blamed the disruptions on a “large, coordinated group and/or a country” due to the significant resources employed. Speaking on Fox News, he hinted that IP addresses involved in the cyberattack were traced to locations “in the Ukraine area”.

Cybersecurity firm Darktrace believes it to be a standard DDoS attack, a method that sends a massive volume of traffic in an attempt to overwhelm and temporarily disrupt a service.

“Importantly, these sorts of attacks are almost always delivered by botnets,” said Toby Lewis, head of threat analysis at Darktrace.

“Botnets are globally distributed networks of computers that have been unknowingly recruited to take part in the attack—typically through some form of compromise or the use of malware,” he added.

“These sorts of botnets are unfortunately incredibly commonplace, making up the so-called “background noise of the internet”, and often available for hire for whoever is willing to pay.”

The operational issues spread over eight hours, with more than 40,000 users reportedly unable to access the platform according to tracking website Downdetector.com.

“Service interruption for over eight hours is unacceptable for a major platform,” said Roger Grimes, data-driven defence evangelist at cybersecurity firm KnowBe4.

“Every major platform knows it’s a target and plans accordingly. Certainly, such a major controversial platform has to have been planning for this. So, the question is “What went wrong? What did they not expect?”

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