A version of this story appeared in the daily Threat Status newsletter from The Washington Times. Click here to receive Threat Status delivered directly to your inbox each weekday.
Elon Musk is attributing the recent major outage on his social media site X to a well-resourced adversary using internet protocol addresses originating from Ukraine.
X users encountered poor and intermittent access to the social media platform on Monday, growing increasingly frustrated throughout the day.
Mr. Musk, X’s multi-billionaire owner and now a close adviser to President Donald Trump, said on Monday afternoon he was tracing the source of the “massive cyberattack.”
“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Mr. Musk said on X. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”
A few hours later, Mr. Musk said the hackers appeared to have connections to 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,” Mr. Musk said on Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow.”
Hackers may “spoof” IP addresses to conceal their location and handiwork. Such spoofing often accompanies distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS), where victims are overwhelmed with traffic bringing their services to a halt.
Mr. Musk did not formally accuse Ukraine’s government or Ukrainian hackers of attacking his company, and offered no proof that they were involved.
The IT Army of Ukraine, a well-known Ukrainian hacking activist collective, denied any involvement in the outage — even before Mr. Musk voiced his suspicions.
“To prevent any kind of insinuations, we officially state that IT ARMY has no connection whatsoever to the recent cyber incident involving Elon Musk’s social network X,” the group said on Telegram on Monday evening.
Mr. Musk’s recent commentary on Russia’s war in Ukraine has provoked outrage from some of Ukraine’s ardent defenders.
In a message calling for a peaceful end to the war, the billionaire tech mogul said on Sunday his Starlink system was the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Mr. Musk said the Ukrainian front line would collapse without access to SpaceX’s Starlink, which makes high-speed internet available via connections to satellites that can’t be blocked by an adversary.
In response to Mr. Musk, Poland Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski posted a message saying his country was paying approximately $50 million for Ukraine’s Starlink access and it could look to other suppliers, bringing a sharp rebuke from the X owner.
“Be quiet, small man,” Mr. Musk said on X to Mr. Sikorski. “You pay a tiny fraction of the cost.”
Mr. Musk’s companies, including Tesla, are a popular target for his political opponents. For example, Tesla dealerships have faced Molotov cocktails, graffiti and gunfire over his polarizing political views and connections with President Trump.
Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that radical leftists were targeting Tesla and he intended to show his support for Mr. Musk with his wallet.
Speaking at a White House event Tuesday, Mr. Trump confirmed he was personally going to buy an electric car produced by Mr. Musk’s Tesla car company, and was considering labeling those who vandalized the company’s cars or protested at dealerships because of Mr. Musk’s political activities as “domestic terrorists.”
“I’m going to buy because, No. 1, it’s a great product, as good as it gets,” Mr. Trump said at the White House with Mr. Musk and his son at his side.. “No. 2, because this man has devoted his energy and his life to doing this, and I think he has been treated unfairly.”
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.