Elon Musk Claims a Cyberattack Caused X Outage

For many of us, social media is a huge part of our daily lives. Whether it's checking our FaceBook for friend's updates or posting our own pictures, our phones rarely leave our sides.

So, when social media goes down, people tend to get concerned. On Monday, Elon Musk's social media platform, X, when down for many but not all users - including Musk.

What Caused the Outage?

While social media outages are typically simply caused by app updates or service interruptions, Elon Musk claims this outage was the result of a "massive cyberattack" against the company.

Although the billionaire had no evidence to offer, he wrote in an X post, "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..."

According to Downdetector, X users starting reporting outages as early as 5am EST. However, reports peaked just before 10am when almost 40,000 users were reporting issues. The outages continued into the afternoon.

The reports started to decline around 2pm on Monday, with only 3,800 reports. However, some features remained unavailable to users.

Was it a Cyberattack?

While Musk claimed the outage is a result of a cyberattack, we don't know for sure why X was down. In August 2024, he claimed a similar scenario. X crashed on the same day he was supposed to stream an interview with Donald Trump, then former president. He blamed a cyberattack then as well.

There is no evidence of a cyberattack at this time, however it's not out of the question. Elon Musk has been facing a lot of backlash since taking on a leading role at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is intended to cut any wasteful and unnecessary government spending.

Musk is also the CEO of Tesla, and some Tesla owners are even selling their vehicles in an effort to distance themselves from him. Tesla dealerships have also been targeted and vandalized by protestors.

X Outage Affecting Free Agency News

The NFL's new league year officially begins on Wednesday, March 12, 2025, at 4 p.m. ET, marking the start of free agency when contracts can be signed. However, the "legal tampering period" began earlier on Monday, March 10, at noon ET. During this time, teams can negotiate with agents of unrestricted free agents but cannot finalize or sign contracts until the new league year starts.

On Monday, NFL insiders like ESPN's Adam Schefter and NFL Network's Ian Rapoport began reporting on potential signings and trades. However, they faced challenges due to technical issues on X, the platform where they typically share updates. Despite these hurdles, the legal tampering period remains a critical time for teams and players to lay the groundwork for deals before free agency officially opens.