DDoS Attack Disrupts Musk-Trump interview on X: What is it?

Elon Musk, the owner of X formerly (Twitter), has reported a significant distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on his platform.
This cyberattack is being held responsible for the multiple disruptions and delays experienced during his live interview with Donald Trump on X Spaces.
The event was originally scheduled for 8pm ET on Monday but faced accessibility issues due to technical glitches allegedly caused by the DDoS attack.

There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. Working on shutting it down.

Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

What is a DDoS attack?

A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is a type of cyber-attack that aims to disrupt a targeted server or network’s normal traffic by flooding it with internet traffic. These attacks use multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic, which can include computers and other networked resources.

Technical glitches spark social media trends

The technical problems with the live stream triggered a wave of reactions on social media.
Phrases such as “Crashed,” “unable” and “X blackout” began trending on X.
Despite an earlier test run with eight million concurrent listeners, only a fraction of this audience was able to tune into the live discussion when it eventually took place.

Live stream delay and Musk’s explanation

Viewers who managed to connect to the live stream were met with approximately 30 minutes of hold music.
This was followed by several minutes of complete silence before the live stream finally commenced at 8:40pm ET.
Musk attributed these delays to an overload of data lines, stating, “All of our data lines, like basically hundreds of gigabits of data, were saturated.”
He later added that they believe most issues have been resolved.

Previous instances of live stream disruptions

This is not the first instance where X’s live streaming infrastructure has encountered problems during significant events.
In a previous year, a live discussion between Musk and Ron DeSantis announcing DeSantis’s brief presidential bid also faced similar issues with repeated crashes and delays.
These recurring technical difficulties highlight the challenges faced by platforms hosting high-profile live streams.

---

𝕯𝖗. 𝐗𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐈𝐆, Cybersecurity Expert