Tech billionaire Elon Musk on March 10 claimed that his social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter), was under a massive cyberattack. In a post he emphasised that this attack was significant, writing: “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 …”Then, speaking to Fox Business Network the same day, Elon Musk told the channel that the cyberattacker’s IP addresses had been “traced” to Ukraine. He did not elaborate or give other details.So, we see what experts feel about the issue if IP addresses were traced back to Ukraine… does that mean the disruption originated from Ukraine?Also Read | X down once again, users face another MASSIVE outageX Down, IPs Traced to Ukraine: What Do Experts Say?According to an AP report, cybersecurity experts dismissed the idea that tracing the IP address meant you had found the definitive source of the attack. They pointed out that IP addresses don’t necessarily indicate the origin of an attack.Writing on social media platform Bluesky, security researcher Kevin Beaumont said that Elon Musk’s claim about the Ukraine origin is “missing a key fact — it was actually IPs from worldwide, not just Ukraine.”Beaumont noted that the cyberattack was conducted using the Mirai variant botnet, which uses compromised cameras. From his expertise, speaking about who is likely behind the attack, he pointed to teens saying, “Smells of APTs — advanced persistent teenagers.”Further, the report cited Allan Liska from cybersecurity company Recorded Future, who cast doubt that IP addresses pin point origin. He said that even if “every IP address that hit Twitter today originated from Ukraine (doubtful), they were most likely compromised machines controlled by a botnet run by a third party that could be located anywhere in the world.”Also Read | ‘Why would Ukraine block its own access to X?’ Netizens question Musk’s claimBackground: What Happened?Hours after a series of outages Monday that left X unavailable to thousands of users, Elon Musk claimed that the social media platform was being targeted in a “massive cyberattack.”“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk claimed in a post. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing …”Complaints about outages spiked Monday at 6 a.m. Eastern and again at 10 a.m, with more than 40,000 users reporting no access to the platform, according to the tracking website Downdetector.com. By afternoon, the reports had dropped to the low thousands.A sustained outage that lasted at least an hour began at noon, with the heaviest disruptions occurring along the U.S. coasts.Downdetector.com said that 56% of problems were reported for the X app, while 33% were reported for the website.It’s not possible to definitively verify Musk’s claims without seeing technical data from X, and the likelihood of them releasing that is “pretty low,” said Nicholas Reese, an adjunct instructor at the Center for Global Affairs in New York University’s School of Professional Studies and expert in cyber operations.Reese said the likelihood that a state actor is behind the outages “doesn’t make a lot of sense” given their short duration — unless it was a warning for something larger to come.“There are kind of two types of cyber attacks — there are ones that are designed to be very loud and there are ones that are designed to be very quiet,” he said. “And the ones that are usually the most valuable are the ones that are very quiet. Something like this was designed to be discovered. So to me that almost certainly eliminates state actors. And the value that they would have gained from it is pretty low.”Reese added that it’s possible that a group was trying to make a statement with causing X outages, but added that such a temporary outage “is not much of a statement to me.”“It’s only really a statement if there is some kind of follow on action, which I would not rule out at this point,” he said.In March 2023 the social media platform then known as Twitter experienced a bevy of glitches for over an hour as links stopped working, some users were unable to log in and images were not loading for others.“X outage” was trending on rival social media platform BlueSky, with some posts welcoming users to the site and urging them to stick around.Musk bought the former Twitter in 2022 and also serves as the CEO of Tesla. He’s running X while simultaneously having access to U.S. government data systems — often wearing a shirt that says “tech support.”Catch all the Business News , Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.Business NewsNewsUs NewsIf IPs for X cyberattack emerge in Ukraine, what does it mean about the origin of attack?MoreLess
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