Elon Musk Attributes X Outages to Cyberattack as Tesla Shares Plunge

Elon Musk has recently stated that the widespread disruptions on his social media platform, X, were caused by a "massive cyberattack." He claimed this assault was orchestrated by a "large, coordinated group" or possibly a nation-state.

On Monday, tens of thousands of users around the world reported intermittent outages on X, according to Down Detector, a website that monitors service disruptions. Users from countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and India faced issues where new posts failed to load at various times throughout the day. Each disruption lasted only a few minutes.

Musk later confirmed that X experienced a site-wide disruption, admitting, "We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources," in a post on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The pro-Palestinian hacktivist group, Dark Storm, claimed responsibility for the attack on their Telegram page, although they did not provide any evidence linking them to the outages. A representative from Dark Storm explained to Bloomberg News that this attack is part of a broader hacktivist initiative against Israel.

Despite Musk's claims, a spokesperson for X did not respond to multiple requests for comment regarding the incident.

This incident is not the first time Musk has attributed outages on his social media platform to cyberattacks. Last year, Musk claimed a "massive" cyberattack was responsible for delaying a conversation between him and former U.S. President Donald Trump on X, describing it as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack—which involves flooding a site with excessive traffic to overwhelm its servers and capabilities.

The recent service interruptions come as Tesla's stock saw one of its steepest declines since 2020. The shares dropped nearly 16% in one day, marking a significant loss for the electric carmaker. This downturn brought the company's total stock loss for the year to 42% due to rising concerns from Wall Street about Tesla's vehicle deliveries.

UBS analyst Joseph Spak has adjusted Tesla's delivery projections, estimating the company will deliver only 367,000 vehicles this quarter, a 16% decrease from his previous estimate. He also forecasts that Tesla's sales in 2025 may not surpass last year's figures, projecting approximately a 5% annual drop.

Although Tesla executives have assured stakeholders that growth is expected to resume in 2025, they admit the transition to a refreshed Model Y has caused some disruptions. Spak noted that Tesla's website in China indicates that customers may only need to wait two to four weeks for delivery of the new SUV model, suggesting demand may not be as strong as anticipated.

The negative sentiment surrounding Musk has also impacted Tesla's reputation in key electric vehicle markets. For instance, vehicle registrations in Germany dropped by 70% during the initial two months of the year, coinciding with Musk's comments on the country's competitive federal elections.

In China, which is the largest electric vehicle market globally, Tesla is facing stiff competition from local manufacturer BYD. Shipments from Tesla's Shanghai plant fell 49% in February to 30,688 vehicles, marking the lowest monthly total since July 2022.

Musk, Cyberattack, Tesla