Social media platform X suffered multiple service outages on Monday due to what its owner, billionaire Elon Musk, called a “massive cyberattack” that he said possibly originated from Ukraine.
According to Downdetector, an online tracker of service outages, thousands of users reported outages Monday morning on the social media site bought by Musk in 2022 for $44 billion.
“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” Musk said in a post on the platform at 1:25 p.m. “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.”
Here is what we know about the ongoing outages.
Elon Musk says IP address from cyberattack came from Ukraine
During an interview on Fox Business Network on Monday afternoon, Musk told host Larry Kudlow that the IP addresses from the cyberattack on X originated in Ukraine.
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“We’re not sure what happened but there was a massive cyberattack to try and bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area,” Musk said on the Fox program
Musk’s accusations come amid the U.S. and Ukraine’s strained relationship following a heated meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy last month in Washington, D.C. Last week, Trump halted U.S. weapons deliveries to Ukraine and paused all aid to the war-torn country.
USA TODAY contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on Monday but has not received a response.
Service back up by Monday afternoon
Outage reports declined again by Monday afternoon, reaching only around 3,800 reports by 2:16 p.m., according to Downdetector.
USA TODAY journalists were able to access X by 2:30 p.m. ET, but some features remained unavailable.
X outages impeding NFL free agency news
At 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, the NFL’s new league year will kick off and free agency will start. Until then, the league’s legal tampering period began at noon ET on Monday.
Throughout the legal tampering period, NFL insiders usually break the news of pending signings, trades and offseason moves. But on Monday, insiders were tasked with breaking news while navigating outage issues on X, where newsbreakers like ESPN’s Adam Schefter and NFL Network’s Ian Rappaport regularly report on transactions.
NFL free agency: Tracking latest news, updates, signings from legal tampering period
Intermittent outage issues continue
Outage reports sharply declined by 1:28 p.m. ET, with only around 3,700 users reporting X issues, Downdetector shows. USA TODAY journalists were briefly able to access the social media platform around 1:45 p.m. ET.
However, outage reports again started to tick up, and around 1:54 p.m. ET, USA TODAY journalists could not access X.
Outage reports continue to come in after 1 pm ET
The latest spike in outage reports continued into Monday afternoon, with another jump in reported issues around 12:53 p.m. ET. More than 34,000 users reported a lack of access to X, according to Downdetector.
USA TODAY journalists were unable to access X around 1:10 p.m. ET.
Most recent X outage begins
The most recent outage began around 11:15 a.m. ET. Over 27,000 users were reporting issues accessing the social media platform by 11:30 a.m. ET, Downdetector shows.
Previous X outages around 6 am ET and 9:30 am ET
The initial outage began around 5:59 a.m. ET Monday, with over 22,000 users reporting that they could not access X. Most people, nearly 60%, were reporting issues with the app; however, according to Downdetector, about 31% of the reported outages are from users trying to use X’s website.
USA TODAY journalists were able to access X again by 6:20 a.m. ET and the outage appeared to be over around then, with the number of reported outages dropping to 438 by 6:22 a.m. ET.
The second outage occurred around 9:30 a.m. ET, with over 37,000 users reporting issues accessing the social media platform at 9:50 a.m., Downdetector shows. USA TODAY journalists were able to access X again by 10:25 a.m. ET.
This is a developing story.
Gabe Hauari is a national trending news reporter at USA TODAY. You can follow him on X @GabeHauari or email him at [email protected].
