Elon Musk, owner of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), announced that the platform experienced a significant cyberattack on Monday, March 10. Users began reporting issues early in the morning, with outage reports peaking at over 40,000 by 10 a.m. Eastern Time, according to DownDetector, a service that tracks website and app outages.
Musk addressed the situation on X, stating, “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.”
Users affected by the outage reported continuous buffering and error messages when attempting to load content on the platform. The disruptions persisted throughout the day, leading many to express their frustrations on alternative social media platforms.
This incident is not the first time X has faced security challenges. In July 2020, the platform suffered a significant breach where high-profile accounts were compromised to promote a cryptocurrency scam. The attackers gained access through social engineering tactics targeting Twitter employees, leading to unauthorized tweets from accounts belonging to prominent individuals and companies.
The recent cyberattack on X raises concerns about the platform’s vulnerability to sophisticated threats. The involvement of a well-resourced group or nation-state, as suggested by Musk, underscores the need for robust cybersecurity measures to protect social media platforms from such large-scale disruptions.
