KUALA LUMPUR – Social media platform X experienced a massive outage last night, with hacker-activist group DieNet claiming responsibility for the downtime.
The group described the attack as a “test” of its Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) capabilities.
The attack – which involved flooding X’s servers with artificial traffic to disrupt access – saw over 25,800 outage reports worldwide at its peak around 9pm Malaysian time, according to Downdetector.com.
Scoop’s checks on the monitoring site found that this includes nearly 700 from Malaysia. Service was largely restored by 11pm, although as of this morning, some users claim they were still experiencing issues in loading replies, seeing posts, and logging in from their mobile devices.
The claim by DieNet was reported by SITE Intelligence Group, though it could not be independently verified. X has yet to issue a formal statement.
However, X owner and world’s richest man Elon Musk admitted the platform’s internal systems failed to respond as designed.
“As evidenced by the X uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made.
“The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not,” he said on X.
Musk also declared he was “back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms,” vowing to refocus on his companies – X, artificial intelligence firm xAI, Tesla and SpaceX.
Tech companies over politics?
Once a vocal backer of government spending cuts under President Donald Trump, Musk had taken on a formal advisory role in a so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” or DoGE – a Trump administration initiative tasked with slashing federal jobs and budgets.
That initiative resulted in tens of thousands of layoffs and the cancellation of billions in government contracts and grants.
Musk’s involvement sparked widespread protests in the US and Europe, particularly targeting Tesla, where brand perception took a hit. Tesla’s sales slumped, and the company posted its first annual decline in vehicle deliveries last year.
In an apparent effort to reassure stakeholders, Musk reportedly confirmed earlier this month that he had scaled back his involvement in the Trump administration to just “one or two days a week.”
Following the X outage and sustained business pressure, Musk said he “must super focus on X/xAI and Tesla (plus Starship launch next week)”.
His return to hands-on leadership coincides with SpaceX’s preparations for another launch of its Starship mega-rocket, a cornerstone of Musk’s long-term Mars colonisation plans. The vehicle is still in development and has previously failed mid-flight during test missions.
Musk, who spent nearly US$300 million (RM1.4 billion) on Trump’s re-election campaign and related Republican causes, has also indicated a shift in his political priorities.
“I will be cutting back significantly on political spending,” he said this week, although he added that he may still support causes “if I see a reason.” – May 25, 2025