WASHINGTON, DC – NOVEMBER 13: Elon Musk listens as U.S. President-elect Donald Trump addresses a … [+] House Republicans Conference meeting at the Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill on November 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. As is tradition with incoming presidents, Trump is traveling to Washington, DC to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House as well as meet with Republican congressmen on Capitol Hill. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

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Elon Musk is on the defensive after Twitter (now known as X) was down for several hours today. He claimed in one report that the outage was due to a coordinated cyber attack that originated in Ukraine.

“There was a massive cyberattack to try and bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area,” he told Fox News.

The outage was random and intermittent, lasting for 45 minutes at a time, then resuming only to go dark again for another 45 minutes. Another extended outage lasted several hours.

While Musk did not provide evidence of the attack, it’s not a surprise that he would suspect Ukraine now that he is so firmly aligned with President Trump. Given his close association with Trump and the recent argument in the White House over Ukraine aid, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the social media platform would become a target.

Tracing why Twitter (X) was down

In most cases, it’s usually possible to at least determine the origin of a cyberattack using digital forensics techniques. For example, if there was a code injection on a server or a coordinated denial-of-service attack, security experts should be able to find some clues.

Musk himself announced on the X platform that they were “tracing” the incident, which likely means X officials were trying to find out where the attacks originated and how they were made.

It can take several days or even weeks to determine the true cause of a cyberattack or if that was even the real reason that the Twitter service was down for so long.

Political clashes

This wasn’t the only trending story related to Musk today.

Musk seems to be clashing with political figures and world leaders on a routine basis. In posts that were also related to Ukraine, Musk claimed his Starlink service is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Musk also called Senator Mark Kelly a “traitor” for visiting the country.

Twitter, now called X, has become an unfiltered public square for discourse like this, and there are pros and cons to having such an open debate. It means anyone can chime in with an opinion, even if they don’t offer any support or evidence.

In recent months, social media platforms have removed some gatekeeping and monitoring as a way to give users more freedom to post what they want.

In this case, the fact that Musk was claiming a specific country was responsible for a cyberattack without releasing any evidence is proof that social media has taken on a new freeform approach. We may never know why Twitter was down.