What is The Scale of Involvement of Countries in Cyberattacks on X, Details Inside- wna24

Washington: The social media platform X experienced a massive global outage on Monday. Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), said that the outage was caused by a “massive” cyberattack, likely orchestrated by a large group or even a country.
Musk mentioned that X faces cyberattacks on a daily basis, but this time, the platform was targeted with a substantial amount of resources.

“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. Tracing…” Elon Musk said.

From time to time, US has accused Russia and China of carrying out cyberattacks on its government websites. However, it is important to note that not all cyberattacks on Twitter have been officially attributed to specific countries.

In 2016, Russia was accused of carrying out a series of cyberattacks using state-sponsored actors, including groups like APT28 (Fancy Bear), which were aimed at disrupting the U.S. presidential election, using Twitter to spread disinformation and amplify divisive narratives.

Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations were identified as part of broader campaigns, including the “Internet Research Agency” (IRA) that targeted social media platforms, according to a bipartisan report published by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Senate Select Intelligence Committee came to this conclusion after holding five open hearings in 2018 under the chairmanship of Richard Burr.

(Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey at senate committee hearing)

The panel held five open hearings on Russia’s use of social media, including a September 2018 open hearing with Facebook’s former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter’s former Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey.

“Russia is waging an information warfare campaign against the U.S. that didn’t start and didn’t end with the 2016 election. Their goal is broader: to sow societal discord and erode public confidence in the machinery of government. By flooding social media with false reports, conspiracy theories, and trolls, and by exploiting existing divisions, Russia is trying to breed distrust of our democratic institutions and our fellow Americans. While Russia may have been the first to hone the modern disinformation tactics outlined in this report, other adversaries, including China, North Korea, and Iran, are following suit,” Richard Burr said.

Also Read: Elon Musk Claims ‘Massive Cyberattack’ On X 

In 2019, Twitter detected a coordinated influence operation originating from Iran targeting users in the U.S. and the Middle East, attempting to manipulate public opinion on topics like the Iraq protests and U.S. foreign policy.

Also in 2009, Twitter faced a series of outages. Hackers who took responsibility claimed to have links to Iran.

(China was accused of carrying out state-sponsored ops on Twitter/Shutterstock.)

In 2020, Twitter removed thousands of fake accounts that were allegedly linked to Chinese state-sponsored operations. The social media platform said that those bot accounts were engaged in spreading pro-China propaganda and disinformation.

In 2020, North Korean hackers, such as those associated with the Lazarus Group, were accused of targetting Twitter accounts related to government agencies and businesses.

Downdetector, which tracks outages by compiling status updates from multiple sources, including user-submitted reports, indicated that at 3:20 PM alone, 17,871 complaints were logged.  

This isn’t the first major outage for the platform. Back in March 2023, when it was still known as Twitter, users experienced a series of technical glitches for over an hour, during which links stopped working, login attempts failed, and images were unable to load.