“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources,” Musk claimed in a post. “Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing …”

Complaints about outages spiked Monday at 6 a.m. Eastern and again at 10 a.m, with more than 40,000 users reporting no access to the platform, according to the tracking website Downdetector.com. By afternoon, the reports had dropped to the low thousands.

A sustained outage that lasted at least an hour began at noon, with the heaviest disruptions occurring along the U.S. coasts.

Downdetector.com said that 56% of problems were reported for the X app, while 33% were reported for the website.

It’s not possible to definitively verify Musk’s claims without seeing technical data from X, and the likelihood of them releasing that is “pretty low,” said Nicholas Reese, an adjunct instructor at the Center for Global Affairs in New York University’s School of Professional Studies and expert in cyber operations.

Reese said the likelihood that a state actor is behind the outages “doesn’t make a lot of sense” given their short duration — unless it was a warning for something larger to come.

“There are kind of two types of cyber attacks — there are ones that are designed to be very loud and there are ones that are designed to be very quiet,” he said. “And the ones that are usually the most valuable are the ones that are very quiet. Something like this was designed to be discovered. So to me that almost certainly eliminates state actors. And the value that they would have gained from it is pretty low.”

Reese added that it’s possible that a group was trying to make a statement with causing X outages, but added that such a temporary outage “is not much of a statement to me.”

“It’s only really a statement if there is some kind of follow on action, which I would not rule out at this point,” he said.

In March 2023 the social media platform then known as Twitter experienced a bevy of glitches for over an hour as links stopped working, some users were unable to log in and images were not loading for others.

“X outage” was trending on rival social media platform BlueSky, with some posts welcoming users to the site and urging them to stick around.

Musk bought the former Twitter in 2022 and also serves as the CEO of Tesla. He’s running X while simultaneously having access to U.S. government data systems — often wearing a shirt that says “tech support.”

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These actions can reveal your user name and password, which can be used to steal money or sensitive information.

If you are contacted by a person or organization that appears to be WHO, verify their authenticity before responding.

The World Health Organization will:

• never ask for your username or password to access safety information
• never email attachments you didn’t ask for
• never charge money to apply for a job, register for a conference, or reserve a hotel
• never conduct lotteries or offer prizes, grants, certificates or funding through email.

Be on alert when you receive an email with any link or attachments containing any reference to WHO. It might be a cyberattack.

The only call for donations WHO has issued is the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, which is linked to below.  Any other appeal for funding or donations that appears to be from WHO is a scam.  

• COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund

Beware that criminals use email, websites, phone calls, text messages, and even fax messages for their scams. You can verify if communication is legit by contacting WHO directly.

• Contact WHO
• Report a scam 

Phishing: malicious emails and messages appearing to be from WHOWHO is aware of suspicious email messages attempting to take advantage of the COVID-19 emergency. This fraudulent action is called phishing.
These “Phishing” emails appear to be from WHO, and will ask you to:

• give sensitive information, such as usernames or passwords
• click a malicious link
• open a malicious attachment.

Using this method, criminals can install malware or steal sensitive information.

How to prevent phishing:

1. Check their email address.
   
   Make sure the sender has an email address such as ‘person@who.int’
   
   If there is anything other than ‘who.int’ after the ‘@’ symbol, this sender is not from WHO.  For example, WHO does not send email from addresses ending in ‘@who.com’ , ‘@who.org’ or ‘@who-safety.org’
   
   Beware, however, that even an email address with the correct domain name may not be from WHO.  Criminals can forge the “From” address on email messages to make them appear to be from ‘@who.int’. Please follow the steps from 2 to 6 below to prevent phishing.
   
   WHO is implementing a new email security control called Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) to prevent this type of impersonation.
   
   .
2. Check the link before you click.  
   
   Make sure the link starts with ‘https://www.who.int’.  Better still, navigate to the WHO website directly, by typing ‘https://www.who.int’ into your browser.
   
   
3. Be careful when providing personal information. 
   
   Always consider why someone wants your information and if it is appropriate. There is no reason someone would need your username & password to access public information.
   
   
4. Do not rush or feel under pressure. 
   
   Cybercriminals use emergencies such as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic to get people to make decisions quickly. Always take time to think about a request for your personal information, and whether the request is appropriate.
   
   
5. If you gave sensitive information, don’t panic.  
   
   If you believe you have given data such as your username or passwords to cybercriminals, immediately change your credentials on each site where you have used them.
   
   
6. If you see a scam, report it.  
   
   If you see a scam, tell the WHO about it.  

• Report a scam 

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