On March 10, X (formerly Twitter) experienced multiple outages due to what Elon Musk described as a ‘massive cyberattack’. Musk suggested that the attack was significantly resourced, possibly involving a large coordinated group or a nation-state.
The hacker group Dark Storm Team claimed responsibility for initiating a DDoS attack causing these service interruptions.
Social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, suffered a series of outages throughout the day, which its owner, Elon Musk, attributed to a “massive cyberattack.”
The disruptions reported globally, began early Monday morning and continued into the evening, affecting thousands of users across the United States, United Kingdom, and beyond.
According to outage tracking service Downdetector, the first wave of issues emerged around 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time (ET), with over 20,000 users reporting difficulties accessing the platform.
Subsequent outages struck at approximately 9:30 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. ET, peaking at more than 40,000 reported incidents.
By late afternoon, Musk confirmed the platform was under attack, stating on X, “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.”
The hacker collective Dark Storm Team later claimed responsibility for the disruptions, asserting they had launched a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack aimed at overwhelming X’s servers.
In a public Telegram post, the group, known for targeting entities in Israel and NATO member states, took credit for the assault, though their precise motives remain unclear.
Security analysts note that the Dark Storm Team, formed in 2023 with a pro-Palestinian agenda, has escalated its cyberattacks in recent months, vowing to strike government and high-profile targets.
Musk, who acquired the platform in 2022 for $44 billion, indicated that his team was actively “tracing” the source of the attack, hinting at its sophistication.
“This wasn’t a routine hit—it took significant effort,” he added in a follow-up post. The outages, which intermittently disrupted access to both the X app and website, left users frustrated, with some speculating on X about potential political motivations tied to Musk’s recent alignment with U.S. President Donald Trump and his controversial role in government efficiency initiatives.
As of 9:30 p.m. Eastern African Time (EAT), partial service had been restored in some regions, though intermittent issues persisted. Cybersecurity experts suggest the scale of the attack points to a well-funded operation, potentially beyond the capabilities of a lone hacking group.
Neither X nor federal authorities have released an official statement confirming the involvement of a nation-state, but the incident has reignited debates over the platform’s security vulnerabilities since Musk’s drastic staff reductions post-acquisition.
The situation remains fluid, with X engineers working to stabilize the platform and investigators probing the attack’s origins.
This marks one of the most significant disruptions to X since Musk’s takeover, raising questions about its resilience against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats.
