Elon Musk said on Monday that X was hit by a “massive DDoS attack” just before his Space interview with Donald Trump. The X Space session was scheduled for 8 am ET on Monday, but crashed as soon as it began. It is notable that the problem occurred when X tested Space just hours before the scheduled interview. Interestingly, a recent report claimed that an X employee allegedly said that Musk was lying about it being a DDoS attack and that the crash was actually caused by a technical glitch. X has yet to officially clarify this, and the current stance is in line with Musk’s claims that it was a DDoS attack that disrupted the interview.

What is a DDoS attack?

A DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attack is a type of cyber attack that uses multiple computers or devices to overwhelm a targeted website, server or network with so much traffic that it stops working completely. Imagine if so many customers were trying to enter a popular store at the same time that the doors got jammed and no one could get in – this is similar to what happens during a DDoS attack, but online.

In a DDoS attack, attackers don’t use just one computer; they often use thousands, sometimes millions, of devices that they have taken control of without the owners’ knowledge. These devices, which can be anything from ordinary computers to smartphones or smart home gadgets, are part of a network called a “botnet.” Attackers send commands to all of these devices simultaneously, instructing them to send requests or data to a target.

The target can be a website, an online service, or any system that needs to be accessed over the Internet. When the target is overwhelmed with all these requests, it becomes so busy trying to handle them that it cannot do its normal work. This can cause the website or service to slow down significantly, or even cause it to crash completely, making it unavailable to legitimate users.

DDoS attacks can be very destructive, especially if they target important websites or services. Companies, governments and organizations that rely on being online can lose money, data or trust due to these attacks. They are often used by hackers to spread chaos, make political statements or demand ransom in exchange for stopping the attack.

A recent example of a DDoS attack was Microsoft’s outage last month. Microsoft suffered a widespread outage affecting Microsoft 365 and Azure services on July 30, 2024, which was eventually found to be caused by a DDoS attack. The attack caused nine hours of disruption, affecting various services including Microsoft Entra, Intune, Power BI, and Azure App Services, causing global connectivity issues.

During the attack, Microsoft’s Azure Front Door (AFD) and Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) systems saw an unexpected increase in traffic. This increase overwhelmed the systems, reducing their performance, which in turn caused interrupt-in-the-middle errors, timeouts, and latency issues for users. While Microsoft’s DDoS protection mechanisms were activated by the attack, the company acknowledged that an error in the implementation of these defenses inadvertently worsened the situation, increasing the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it.