Elon Musk Blames Ukrainian Forces For X Outage After Hacking Group Takes Credit

Elon Musk, the owner of X, has accused Ukrainian forces of being behind the cyberattack that caused a global outage of the social media platform on Monday. His statement comes after hacking group Dark Storm had already claimed responsibility for the disruption.

In an interview with Fox News, Musk said, “We’re not sure exactly what happened, but there was a massive cyberattack to bring down the X system with IP addresses originating in the Ukraine area.”

Musk had earlier posted on X, saying, “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.”

Hacking group Dark Storm claims responsibility

X (formerly Twitter) experienced multiple outages throughout Monday. According to Downdetector, an online service tracking platform disruptions, around 2,000 users in India, 18,000 in the US, and 10,000 in the UK reported issues with the platform.

Despite Musk’s accusations, hacking group Dark Storm claimed responsibility for the attack on Telegram, saying they had “taken Twitter offline.” The pro-Palestinian group has previously targeted nations supporting Israel in the Gaza conflict.

US-Ukraine tensions and Musk’s response

Musk’s comments come amid strained relations between the US and Ukraine, following a heated exchange between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28 in the Oval Office.

On Monday, Musk also re-posted claims that USAID-funded Ukrainian groups were blacklisting Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance, and calling for legal action against them.

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Despite the political tensions, Musk confirmed that Starlink communication services would continue to operate in Ukraine. “To be extremely clear, no matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals,” Musk wrote.