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Analysts believe a distributed denial-of-service attack overloaded Xs servers with bogus traffic, interrupting access for genuine users.
Because of the nature of the attack, its not really possible to identify with certainty where it originated.
Hackers used devices in several regions, routing traffic through a number of hijacked IP addresses.
The social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, sufferedmultiple outages on Monday 10 March.
With reported problems peaking at 40,000 on Downdetector, the scale of the outage is not in any doubt.
But now the dust has settled, what exactly caused the outage?
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.
This is traditionally quite a crude form of cyberattack.
Some experts suggest otherwise.
He pointed out that attackers now distribute traffic across entire subnets.
As a result, its difficult to pinpoint the real source of an attack.
In the words of Professor Martin, it tells you absolutely nothing.
If correct, that would disprove Musks statement regarding Ukrainian hackers.
Thats not to say a state actor couldnt be involved.
Another question is how the attack was able to impact X so significantly.
DDoS attacks are relatively commonplace, with Musk himself posting on Monday that X gets attacked every day.
So why did this one bring down X?
Musk is keen to suggest that a heavily resourced group is behind it.
To quote Professor Martin again, it doesn’t reflect well on their cyber security."
Cyber specialists are warning of an increase in the regularity and complexity of DDoS attacks.
In some cases, attackers are extorting businesses by threatening prolonged downtime, says Mound.
Others are threatening politically motivated disruptions against governments, financial institutions, and infrastructure providers.
