Elon Musk, billionaire entrepreneur and head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), asserted on Tuesday that a large-scale cyberattack was responsible for the widespread outages on his social media platform, X (formerly Twitter). Musk suggested that the attack originated from the "Ukraine area" and significantly disrupted the platform’s operations throughout Monday.

"We're still investigating, but there was a massive cyberattack aimed at bringing down X, with IP addresses traced to the Ukraine region," Musk stated during an interview with Larry Kudlow on Fox News.

A hacker group called Dark Storm Team has taken credit for the attack via a public Telegram channel. The group, known for supporting pro-Palestinian causes, has previously targeted entities linked to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. The attack, reportedly a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, flooded X’s servers with excessive traffic, causing repeated disruptions.

Earlier, Musk posted on X that the platform faces cyberattacks daily but described this particular incident as an exceptionally large and well-coordinated effort. “This attack required significant resources. It’s likely the work of either a large, coordinated group or even a state actor,” he stated, without elaborating on what those "resources" entailed.

Cybersecurity analysts have raised doubts about Musk’s claim, noting that even small groups can execute effective DDoS attacks. A source from the internet infrastructure sector, speaking anonymously to Reuters, confirmed that X was targeted by multiple waves of such attacks starting at 9:45 UTC. While not highly sophisticated, these attacks can still be disruptive.

At the peak of the outage, Downdetector recorded over 39,000 affected users in the U.S. by 10 AM ET, with the number dropping to 1,500 by 5 PM.

The cyberattack allegations come as Musk continues to express controversial views on Ukraine. Recently, he claimed that Ukraine’s military front line "would collapse" without access to his Starlink satellite service but assured that he would not revoke it. Responding to criticism on X, Musk defended his stance, saying, “I literally challenged Putin to single combat over Ukraine, and Starlink remains the backbone of their army.” He further stated that he was disheartened by the prolonged conflict, which he believes Ukraine cannot win.