Key Takeaways
- X experienced two outages Monday, disrupting thousands of users in the U.S. and U.K.
- Elon Musk attributed the disruptions to a "massive cyberattack" traced to IP addresses in Ukraine.
- Stability concerns could push advertisers and businesses to seek alternatives.
Elon Musk’s social media platform X experienced two outages Monday, temporarily preventing thousands of users in the U.S. and U.K. from accessing the platform.
According to Downdetector.com, around 40,000 users reported issues, with complaints spiking at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. UK time.
Initially, the cause of the outage was unclear, but Musk later revealed in an interview that a "massive cyberattack" targeted X, potentially involving a large coordinated group or even a nation-state.
"We're not sure exactly what happened. But there was a massive cyberattack to try and bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area," Musk told Fox Business news analyst Larry Kudlow.
The first outage occurred overnight, with more than 21,000 users in the U.S. and 10,800 in the U.K. affected.
The platform appeared to recover by 2:30 a.m. PT, with services resuming after about 45 minutes.
However, later in the day, X went down again, affecting over 8,000 users at 6:45 a.m. PT.
Like the earlier disruption, the second outage lasted around 45 minutes before services were restored.
While X Corp. has not issued an official statement, users took to other platforms, such as Reddit and Bluesky, to express their frustration.
Twitter down?
byu/Savings_Warthog8517 inTwitter
The outages come amid ongoing concerns about the platform's stability following massive staff layoffs after Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion.
This is not the first time X has suffered significant downtime. In August 2024, a major outage saw 66% of users experiencing problems with the app, website, and server connections.
Previous issues also include key features glitching in July 2023 and the March 2024 crash of Ron DeSantis’ "Twitter Spaces" event during his presidential campaign announcement.
The transition from Twitter to X.com in May 2024, which included retiring the Twitter.com domain, has also contributed to technical challenges.
Musk officially rebranded Twitter as X in July 2023 as part of his broader vision for a "super app" integrating payments, messaging, and AI-driven content.
Cyberattack Claims & Security Concerns
Musk claimed on X that the attack was carried out “with a lot of resources” and suggested that either a large, coordinated group or a country was involved.
Speaking later on Fox News, he said the attack had been traced to IP addresses in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, a source from the internet infrastructure industry told Reuters that X was hit by multiple waves of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, which are designed to overload a website or network to make it inaccessible.
The Dark Storm Team later claimed responsibility in a now-deleted Telegram post.
According to an X post by Jay Anderson, Dark Storm is "a pro-Palestinian hacktivist collective conducting cyber operations against Western governments."
As X continues to evolve, users and businesses remain concerned about platform reliability and customer support.
With Musk’s focus on cost-cutting and AI-driven moderation, some worry that technical issues may become more frequent.
Users will be watching closely to see whether future disruptions occur and whether X Corp. will take steps to improve its security and stability.
At the time of publication, DesignRush continues to experience intermittent issues with X.
Musk’s aggressive workforce reductions at X have raised concerns, particularly for businesses that rely on it for customer engagement and marketing.
With this latest attack, fears are growing that a shrinking workforce, coupled with rising cyber threats, could leave X more vulnerable.
Additionally, frequent outages may push advertisers and professional users toward more stable alternatives, posing a risk to X’s revenue streams.
To mitigate the impact of these issues, businesses should diversify their strategies across multiple platforms while keeping a close eye on competitors for emerging opportunities.
Meanwhile, Musk’s xAI launched Grok 3 with advanced reasoning as X hikes Premium+ subscription prices for AI access.
