Inside yesterday’s ‘massive cyber attack’ that caused Twitter to barely even function

If you’re one of the few still forcing their way through pretending Twitter / X is any good these days, yesterday you might have clocked it was even more janky than usual. Yesterday marked what Elon Musk has deemed a ‘massive cyber attack’ on the platform with numerous reports and outages reported by people across the globe. Multiple factions and organisations are claiming responsibility and with Elon Musk implying Ukraine had something to do with it, it’s quite complex trying to suss out what happened. With that in mind, here’s what you actually need to know about the Twitter ‘massive cyber attack’ in a way that isn’t going to make you feel dead stupid for not being a tech bro.

What was actually happening

People were reporting that tweets were just not loading for them when they tried to use Twitter / X. This is obviously quite frustrating when the main reason you would ever go on that hellscape is to look at tweets.

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Elon Musk posted. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.” The ‘attack’ started at around 5.45 am and Down Detector had a huge surge in people reporting problems, and then throughout Monday it continued to spike especially by users of the mobile app.

Not to flex, but in my usage of X for work I never had any issues. Clearly one of the blessed few.

Who is Elon blaming it on?

Whilst he posted on Twitter claiming it was a cyber attack, he posted no evidence for those claims. He did also then reiterate his claims and mentioned Ukraine when speaking on Fox Business later on Monday.

Most Read

Lily Phillips just slept with an 82-year-old man in a care home and the videos are grim

Omg, Nathan from MAFS UK is dating this Love Island 2023 Islander after messy Lacey split

Who’s official who’s not: Nearly one month on, the status of each Love Island All Stars couple

“We’re not sure exactly what happened but there was a massive cyber-attack to try and bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area,” Musk said.

Hacktivist group Dark Storm is claiming responsibility for the attack on Twitter / X, but Elon isn’t engaging.

Right now, things seem to have stabilised again on Twitter. So if you fancy getting bombarded with AI blue tick accounts replying utter generic nonsense, then fill your boots!

For all the latest news and drama and drops, quizzes and memes, like The Tab on Facebook.