‘Why would Ukraine block its own access to X?’ Netizens question Elon Musk’s cyberattack claim

On Monday, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk stated that X experienced a major disruption due to a 'massive cyberattack' originating from the 'Ukraine area.' In a Fox interview, he said the IP addresses linked to the attack came from the Ukraine region.

"We're still unsure of the exact details," Musk told Fox Business Network's Larry Kudlow regarding the incident that impacted his social media platform. "But there was a significant cyberattack aimed at taking down the X system, with IP addresses traced back to the Ukraine region," Musk explained.

Social media reactions

The claims sparked a range of reactions on social media.

“ Traitor musk is now blaming the outage on a 'cyber attack from Ukrainian IP address'... not really an intelligent lie, because why would Ukraine block Ukraine's access to X ???,” one user posted on X.

“Nobody believes you @elonmusk. This was so predictable of you,” another user wrote

“What a shocker! Ukraine is no friend to USA, just a leech,” read another comment.

X went down intermittently on Monday

Social media platform X went down intermittently on Monday. "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," Musk said in a post on X earlier Monday.

He did not clarify exactly what he meant by "a lot of resources" and his comments drew skepticism from cybersecurity specialists, who pointed out that attacks of this nature — called denials of service — have repeatedly been executed by small groups or individuals.

According to Downdetector, X faced intermittent outages, restricting 39,021 users in the U.S. from accessing the platform at its peak at 10 a.m. ET. By 5 p.m., there were reports of the service being down for roughly 1,500 users.

X Down, IPs Traced to Ukraine: What Do Experts Say?

According to an AP report, cybersecurity experts dismissed the idea that tracing the IP meant finding the definitive source of the attack.

Cybersecurity experts quickly pointed out, however, that this doesn't necessarily mean that an attack originated in Ukraine.