August 13, 2024 Elon Musk blamed a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack for a 40-minute delay in his live-streamed interview with presidential candidate Donald Trump on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. The interview, hosted in an X Space, was expected to draw millions of listeners, but technical issues disrupted the start of the event.
Musk stated that the platform had successfully tested the system with eight million concurrent listeners earlier in the day. However, as the event was delayed, Musk posted that a “massive DDoS attack” was targeting X and that they were working to mitigate the impact. Despite these claims, cybersecurity data did not support the existence of a large-scale DDoS attack at the time. Both Check Point Software’s live cyber threat map and NetScout’s DDoS map recorded only minor attacks in the U.S., raising questions about the validity of Musk’s explanation.
The event eventually began with a significantly smaller live audience than anticipated, with numbers fluctuating between 1.1 and 1.3 million. Trump, during the interview, claimed that the event had attracted over 60 million viewers, though no evidence was provided to support this figure. This incident follows previous technical difficulties on X, including a failed livestream of Republican candidate Ron DeSantis’s campaign launch in May 2023.
This latest technical mishap adds to the growing list of challenges facing X under Musk’s leadership, and the technical issues which have followed his massive reduction in technical staff. All of this is raises concerns about the platform’s ability to handle major events and its long-term viability.
