Failure X. Elon Musk with a “powerful cyber attack”

On Monday before noon, the portal X (formerly Twitter) fails. Users reported problems with access to the application and website.

According to the Downdetector analytical platform, which collects information from users reporting faults, three failures of Platform X at 11, 15 and 17 were recorded in Poland. In total, over 12.6 thousand. Polish users.

According to CNBC, only 70,000 reported a failure in the United States. users. In Great Britain, over 10.8 thousand noted problems using the use of platform X.

Downdetector said that 56 percent The problems reported concerned the mobile version, and 33 percent website.

There were moments all day when the X platform operated normally, but then the difficulties returned again after some time.

The owner X is the richest man in the world Elon Muskwhich changed the name of the platform from Twitter.

Musk on his channel on platform X wrote that “a powerful cyber attack took place (still has).”

“We are attacked every day, but this (attack – ed.) Was carried out using large resources. It is either a large, coordinated group or/and there is a country involved” – he added.

According to the American portal Techrader.com, the cause of the failure is not known so far, but some commentators dealing with cybersecurity suggest that this may be a hacker attack DDOS (Distributed Denial-of-Service, i.e. a distributed refusal of service).

The DDOS attack involves sending a huge number of queries from many devices at the same time, e.g. from computers, which causes the website to be incorrect or downtime.

– Currently, we cannot say if there was a cyber attack. However, if Musk's words were true, it would be one of the most serious DDOS attacks against a large digital platform in recent years – said Łukasz Olejnik, an independent consultant and researcher from Department of War Studies, King's College London.

He added that one of the hacker groups (Dark Storm) admitted that she was attacking the portal, but to do this, she would have to have “huge” bots or a network of bots that could “effectively disturb the operation of such a large digital platform.”

– The words of Elon Musk should be approached with great caution – admitted Grzegorz Miecznikowski, an expert on social media. As he pointed out, from the moment of taking the X by Musk the team responsible for cyber security And the infrastructure has been significantly reduced.

– About 70 percent were released, an engineering team. X has been undergoing changes in server architecture for a long time, which could also make some of its elements more susceptible to attacks. It cannot be ruled out that the attack is part of a larger operation to check how X reacts to coordinated interference, which could be part of the future, even more advanced cyber attacks – he assessed.

Miecznikowski emphasized that X is a platform “with a huge impact on public debate”. He added that in recent months the website has been criticized by some experts for the “looser” approach to the moderation of content, and therefore more fake news and hatred comments appeared on it. According to the expert, this can “increase” the activities of hacker groups associated with various political or ideological interests.

He noticed that some experts and experts indicate the possibility of attacking from the site Russia or China. – Both of these countries have been repeatedly accused of conducting aggressive operations at cyberspace, including DDOS attacks on Western social networking sites, banking systems or government institutions – reminded Miecznikowski.