Users worldwide reported difficulties accessing social media platform X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, with outage-tracking website Downdetector.com confirming widespread disruptions.
Meanwhile, platform owner Elon Musk claimed that a "massive cyberattack" was targeting the service.
Despite being officially banned in Pakistan, Downdetector recorded 74 outage reports from Pakistani users at 3:08pm, which surged to 136 by 11:06pm, but an hour later had dwindled to 45. Complaints were primarily received from Lahore, Rawalpindi, and Karachi.
The outage was not limited to Pakistan, as tens of thousands of users in the United States, United Kingdom, and other regions also faced accessibility issues. The number of outage reports in the US peaked at 40,000, later dropping to 26,579, while over 10,800 users in the UK reported similar problems.
Elon Musk Claims Cyberattack on X
Elon Musk took to X to allege that the platform was experiencing an unprecedented cyberattack.
"There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against 𝕏. We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources. Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved," he posted on X, adding that an investigation was underway.
A source within the internet infrastructure industry revealed that several waves of denial-of-service (DoS) attacks hit X starting at 9:45 UTC. These attacks overwhelm targeted platforms with fake traffic, leading to major disruptions.
Technical Experts Weigh In
NetBlocks, a global internet observatory, confirmed that X was experiencing international outages at 7:17pm, clarifying that the incident was not linked to country-level filtering or internet restrictions.
Pakistan, which marked the one-year anniversary of X's ban in February, remains unlikely to lift the restriction anytime soon, according to government officials.
The latest disruption adds to a growing list of technical failures since Musk's 2022 takeover and large-scale staff layoffs. While users await further updates, X has not issued an official response, and no timeline for restoring services has been provided.
