Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter, has disclosed that the platform has experienced a ‘major cyber attack’.
The social media service, which is part of Musk’s portfolio along with Tesla, has reportedly faced multiple outages today (March 10), prompting Musk to address the situation.
Musk stated: “There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X.
“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 …”
This comment was in response to a speculation from an account that suggested the site was not merely experiencing technical difficulties but was actually under attack.
The user wrote: “First, protests against DOGE. Then, Tesla stores were attacked. Now, X is down.
“I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that this downtime is the result of an attack on X.”
They referred to the protests against the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Musk, and claims of Tesla facing attacks as well.
Another user commented to Musk about attempts to silence him and the platform, to which he affirmed with a ‘yes’.
Data from Downdetector.com, a service that tracks website and service outages, indicated that by around 10am Eastern Time, as many as 40,000 users reported issues with Twitter.
Downdetector.com also highlighted that 63 percent of the reported issues came from users of the app, while 30 percent involved attempts to access Twitter via a web browser.
Many users took to the platform to express their frustration: “When you think Twitter is down but you can’t go on Twitter to see if #TwitterDown is trending because Twitter is down.”
A different user wrote: “How many more times is X/Twitter going to go down?”
Another joked: “Twitter went down for 2 hours and I started going through withdrawal….maybe it’s time for me to touch some grass.”
Yet another user demanded: “Why does Twitter keep going DOWN?!?!?! Fix it! (And it’s not just me. I’m texting with Twitter pals clear across the country).”
After acquiring Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion, Musk rebranded the service to ‘X’.
In December, Axios reported that investment firm Fidelity estimated the takeover significantly reduced the site’s value, causing it to drop by 72 percent from Musk’s purchase price to an estimated $12.3 billion, approximately $32 billion less than his initial acquisition cost.