Social media platform X faced widespread intermittent outages on Monday, which owner Elon Musk blamed on a “massive cyberattack”.
The disruptions were reported in Pakistan as well, with the internet outage tracker, Downdetector, citing at least 109 reports from the country.
X has been banned in Pakistan since February last year, and is widely accessed via virtual private networks (VPNs).
Musk’s response to the intermittent outages suggested that a large-scale attack was carried out against X, possibly involving a “country”.
“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” he said in an X post. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved.”
The attack was being traced, Musk added.
Downdetector said around 39,021 users in the United States (US) faced restrictions in accessing X at one point. Reports of outages emerged from different parts of Europe, too, with more than 10,800 users affected in the United Kingdom (UK).
According to statements from cybersecurity experts carried by international media, X was struck by waves of “denial of service”, which is a malicious attack aimed at overloading an online platform. Experts have largely dismissed Musk’s claims of a “massive cyberattack”.
