X Users Aren't Buying Musk's Claim Ukraine Was Behind Site's Massive Outage

Following a massive outage on X that left thousands of users without access, Elon Musk took to Twitter to claim that the site had been hit by a "massive cyberattack" orchestrated by Ukraine. However, users are having a hard time believing Musk's assertion, and many have expressed skepticism about his claims.

Musk wrote: "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 …" He pointed to Ukraine as the culprit, citing IP addresses originating from the country without providing any concrete evidence.

This vague link to Ukraine triggered a barrage of vitriol online, with some of Musk's backers defending his claims and others calling him out for making unsubstantiated accusations. One user even wrote: "Ukraine is so ungrateful for Starlink that has given them the opportunity needed in the war or they wouldn’t have stood a chance." The comment was accompanied by a sarcastic tone, implying that Musk's support for Ukraine through his satellite technology had been a welcome boost to their efforts.

However, not everyone is buying into Musk's narrative. Many users are pointing out the coincidence of the cyberattack occurring just days after a fiery press conference between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Donald Trump, and Vice President JD Vance. Others are questioning the validity of Musk's claims, citing the distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that was identified by experts as coming from diverse IP addresses across the world.

Experts say that DDoS attacks often come through a coordinated army of computers or a "botnet" striking a target with junk traffic to overwhelm its systems. Botnets generate traffic from diverse IP addresses from across the world, making it difficult to determine who is controlling them. Allan Liska of the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future pointed out that even if every IP address that hit Twitter today originated from Ukraine, they were most likely compromised machines controlled by a botnet run by a third party that could be located anywhere in the world.

"Musk thinks people are stupid," another user responded to posts sharing his claims. The user added a community note challenging the Ukraine claims with news coverage of Dark Storm Team taking responsibility for the attack. Others have pointed out the odd logic of making your IP address publicly known when completing a cyberattack, highlighting the lack of evidence supporting Musk's assertions.

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