X outages: Elon Musk blames Ukrainian forces after Dark Storm takes credit

Earlier, a hacking team named Dark Storm claimed credit for the cyber attack that disrupted X services worldwide on Monday.

Updated on: Mar 11, 2025, 10:09:11 IST

By HT News Desk

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Elon Musk, the owner of X, on Monday, blamed Ukrainian forces for the global outage of the social media platform after a hacking team, Darkstorm, had previously taken credit.

Elon Musk has blamed Ukrainian forces for the global outages suffered by X (AFP)

In an interview with Fox News, billionaire Elon Musk addressed the cyber attack on X. “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,” he said.

Also Read: Who is Dark Storm Team, the hacking group allegedly behind X cyberattack?

Musk had earlier issued a statement on X, saying, “There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X. We get attacked everyday, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing…”

Also Read: Elon Musk's big push for US exit from NATO: ‘Doesn’t make sense…'

X (formerly Twitter) suffered repeated outages throughout Monday. Downdetector, a site that monitors online services, reported complaints of the outage from around 2,000 users in India, 18,000 in the US, and 10,000 in the UK.

Hacking group Dark Storm, in a post on Telegram, had claimed responsibility for “taking Twitter offline." The pro-Palestinian group is known for targeting countries which support Israel amid the conflict in the Gaza region.

Musk's accusation comes after relations between the US and Ukraine have notably soured after a war of words erupted between US President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky on February 28 in the Oval Office.

Elon Musk on Monday also re-posted a user's claims about Ukrainian groups funded by the USAID programme supposedly “blacklisting” senior Trump administration officials like vice president JD Vance and calling for prosecution against them.

However, Musk said that Starlink communication services would continue in Ukraine despite the stormy relations with the US.

"To be extremely clear, no matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals," Musk wrote.

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HT News Desk
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