Elon Musk has an Xplanation.
After millions of users across X (formally known as Twitter) experienced outages on March 10, the company’s executive chairman weighed in.
“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” the 53-year-old wrote March 10 as a reply to a user who questioned the outage. “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 …”
No further details have been given on the alleged cyberattack at this time.
Users of the platform first reported outages in the early morning hours, after being restored more complaints began to spike just hours later and continued through the afternoon. For some, their feeds would not refresh, while others could not share posts or were met with a message from Cloudflare, a cybersecurity service provider, that read, “Web server is returning an unknown error.”
Elon acquired the social media platform in 2022, a year before he officially changed the name to X. While he is the majority shareholder of the social network, the SpaceX founder announced that ad exec Linda Yaccarino became the CEO of the company in 2023.
The outage comes after Elon faced another setback. Last week, SpaceX launched a test flight of its Starship megarocket that exploded midair. The mission wasn’t accomplished, as according to NBC News, minutes after takeoff multiple engines cut out as it accelerated into space and controllers lost contact with the vehicle.
“Prior to the end of the ascent burn, an energetic event in the aft portion of Starship resulted in the loss of several Raptor engines,” SpaceX said in a statement March 6. “This in turn led to a loss of attitude control and ultimately a loss of communications with Starship.”
SpaceX also assured the public that they were safe from the debris of the falling rocket.
“We’ve got a lot of measures in place, like debris response areas, where we coordinate very closely with air traffic control,” SpaceX communications manager Dan Hout said during the launch’s livestream. “We have a lot of measures put before we ever launch a rocket to make sure that we’re keeping the public safe. Those worked last time and they’re actively in work right now.”
