After X’s global outage, Elon Musk used his profile on the platform to report what he described as a “massive cyberattack.”
“There has been (and still is) a massive attack against X. We face attacks every day, but this one was particularly sophisticated and well-funded. A large and coordinated group, or even a nation, is involved. [We are] tracking…,” Musk wrote.
A source from the internet infrastructure sector, speaking on condition of anonymity, stated that X had been targeted by multiple waves of denial-of-service attacks starting at 09:45 GMT. This type of attack floods servers with unauthorized traffic, potentially causing significant disruptions, even if the methods used are not highly sophisticated.
The platform experienced further disruptions for thousands of users worldwide, according to data from Downdetector.com. In the United States, outage reports exceeded 40,000 after initially showing a slight decline earlier in the day. In the United Kingdom, more than 10,800 users also reported connectivity issues.
As time went on, millions of people encountered difficulties accessing their accounts, posting messages, and viewing content, significantly impacting the social media experience. During the outage, mentions of the issue surged on other active digital platforms, highlighting the global dependence on these services for real-time communication and information.
The technical issues affected both mobile devices and desktop computers. On smartphones and tablets running iOS and Android, the X app failed to load posts, prevented users from logging in, and generated errors when trying to interact with content.
On desktop computers, both Windows and macOS users experienced failures across popular browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Some users faced long loading times, interface crashes, or even complete inability to access the site.
In some cases, users were able to briefly access the homepage, but core functions, such as posting messages or interacting with others, remained intermittent or entirely disabled.
