X boss Elon Musk has confirmed that his social media platform has been hit with a “massive cyberattack.”
In a statement Monday, Musk confirmed that the attack was responsible for the global outages suffered by the platform.
Musk noted that the “massive” hacking effort is “still” ongoing.
On Monday, tens of thousands of reports were submitted to DownDetector.
Users have been reporting that they could not access the X app or website or that they could not access posts.
Slay News has also been struggling to post updates on X.
In response, Musk wrote midday Monday:
“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.”
Musk added that his company is “tracing” the attacks.
People on the platform first started reporting issues after 5 a.m. ET on Monday, according to DownDetector. After a period of time, the number of reports appeared to drop before picking back up again at around 11 a.m. ET.
DownDetector, in a post on the platform, wrote that it has seen more than 350,000 reports of a possible outage since 5:30 a.m. ET.
The outages appeared to be heaviest on both U.S. coasts.
Downdetector.com said that more than 50 percent of problems were reported for the X app, while about 33 percent were reported for the website, according to its website.
However, it’s likely that more people access the platform using the X app.
According to DownDetector’s website, more than 10,000 people in the United Kingdom also reported an X outage earlier on Monday.
In March 2023, when it was still called Twitter, the platform experienced a flood of glitches for over an hour as links stopped working, some users were unable to log in, and images were not loading for others.
Musk acquired X for $44 billion in 2022 before he later renamed the platform X.
The outage comes amid Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio having publicly sparred with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski on Sunday.
Musk said on X that the Ukraine war with Russia would be severely hampered if he turned off Starlink Internet access in the Eastern European country.
After Russia took down Ukraine’s infrastructure, Musk’s company SpaceX provided the country with free Internet access using its Starlink network of satellites.
On Sunday, Musk, who is currently a senior advisor to President Donald Trump, wrote that Starlink has served as the “backbone of the Ukrainian army.”
He asserted that “their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off.”
He also said he wants peace for Ukraine and that he’s backed the country in its war effort by providing the Starlink service.
Sikorski responded to Musk by saying that Poland was paying for the Internet service.
He also claimed Musk was threatening Ukraine.
The Trump administration and Ukraine’s leadership have been engaged in high-stakes talks about ending the conflict.
The discussion involves a deal for continued support of Ukraine that also benefits the United States.
“Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year,” Sikorski wrote to Musk.
“The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider, we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”
Rubio wrote in response that Sikorski was “just making things up.”
“No one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink,” Rubio noted.
