Pointing finger at Ukraine after X outage is ‘dangerous', cyber expert says
It would be 'dangerous to point the finger' at Ukraine after Elon Musk said X's outage had links to the country, a cybersecurity expert said.
Mr Musk said the social media platform was being targeted in a 'massive cyberattack', telling Fox Business Network that the attackers had 'IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area'.
Complaints about outages spiked around 11am UK time on Monday, and again four hours later, with more than 40,000 users reporting no access to the platform, according to tracking website Downdetector.com.
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 … https://t.co/aZSO1a92no
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2025
Jake Moore, global cybersecurity adviser at software security firm Eset, told the PA news agency that he is 'confident' it was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, which involves multiple IP addresses flooding a server or website with internet traffic.
He went on: 'Unfortunately, X remains one of the most talked about platforms making it a typical target for hackers marking their own territory.
'All that can be done to future proof their networks is to continue to expect the unexpected and build even more robust DDoS protection layers.
'IP addresses can also be directed via software to be seen to have originated anywhere in the world.
'Therefore, even if their analysis suggests Ukraine, it would be dangerous to point the finger so early on.'
Mr Moore added that 'simple analysis' of the IP addresses would point towards their location, but that this can be 'tampered with' to make it seem that the origin is in a different country.
He said: 'Without seeing the report of the investigation it would be difficult to agree with this accusation either way.'
Mr Musk, who is acting as an adviser on federal spending to Donald Trump, previously said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is running a 'fraud machine feeding off the dead bodies of soldiers', suggesting limited appetite for continued American support for Ukraine.
The Tesla CEO bought the site, formerly Twitter, in 2022.
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