Elon Musk-owned microblogging platform X (Formerly Twitter) is down for users across. Today, August 14, many users have reported issues with X being down, as per DownDetector, a platform that monitors service outages. Users from various regions reported that problems started around 12:45 PM and peaked around 1 PM.
Many users encountered an outage on the microblogging platform. When they tried to post, they were greeted with a message that said, "Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot." This problem also affected the website, leaving users unable to view any posts. Around 70 people reported complaints related to issues within the website.
X services are now back online and the app and website are working fine.
DDoS attack on X
On August 13, the highly-anticipated interview between former US President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, which was supposed to take place on the social media platform X (owned by Musk), was delayed due to technical issues. Musk posted on X 18 minutes after the scheduled start time of 8 p.m. US Eastern Time (5:30 AM IST) that there seemed to be a massive DDoS attack on X. He added that they were working on resolving the issue and that, in the worst-case scenario, they would proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.
What is a DDoS attack?
A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a targeted server, service, or network by overwhelming the target or its surrounding infrastructure with a flood of internet traffic.
How does a DDoS attack work?
DDoS attacks are executed using networks of internet-connected machines. These networks consist of computers and other devices, such as IoT devices, that have been infected with malware, enabling them to be controlled remotely by an attacker. These individual devices are referred to as bots (or zombies), and a group of bots is called a botnet.
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