Experts have warned that the IP addresses of cyber attackers can easily be obscured [File]
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

X owner Elon Musk claimed that the social media platform’s large-scale outage affecting thousands of users across continents was a “massive” cyber-attack and suggested that the attackers could be linked to Ukraine.

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Musk said on Fox Business Network that the attackers’ IP addresses originated from Ukraine, though digital experts pointed out this did not mean Ukrainians were responsible for the attack as true locations can easily be obscured with technology.

The billionaire’s comments come days after a heated argument between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Musk had provided his assurances that though he disagreed with Ukraine’s military decisions, he would not cut off its access to his company’s Starlink satellite internet service.

X was hit by an outage on Monday (March 10, 2025) that stopped users from being able to refresh their feeds and see new content. Both the app and the website were affected, according to users. At its peak, the Downdetector platform that compiles outage reports recorded a little over 40,000 such reports from X users.

However, the complaints gradually fell and tapered off on March 11, though some users continued to experience technical glitches when using X.

More information and a forensic investigation is required in order to confirm whether the outage was due to a cyberattack or gutted technical teams at X. However, experts have said an attack is plausible when considering the length and scale of the outage.

“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” Musk posted on X.