News Brief

Trump's 'Comeback' Interview On X Hit By Massive DDoS Attack, Says Musk

Kuldeep Negi

Aug 13, 2024, 08:27 AM | Updated 08:28 AM IST


Former US President Donald Trump
Former US President Donald Trump

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has said that a "massive DDoS attack" on the X platform caused a disruption during his planned interview with former US President Donald Trump.

The interview was scheduled for this morning, marking Trump’s comeback on the platform in the lead-up to the upcoming US Presidential elections in November.

Trump's account was withheld on X, then known as Twitter, during the 2020 elections. It was later restored when Musk became the owner of the social media platform.

However, Trump has stayed away from posting on X and used his own platform 'Truth Social' to reach out to his followers.

Musk, who also owns X, indicated that if the situation worsened, the platform might limit the live audience and would later upload the conversation online.

"There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X. Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later," Musk said in a post as the interview missed its scheduled timing.

A DDOS attack, short for "Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack," involves overwhelming a targeted server or network with excessive internet traffic, causing disruptions in its normal operations.

Fortinet, a leading cybersecurity firm, classifies DDoS attack as cybercrime.

"DDoS Attack means 'Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attack' and it is a cybercrime in which the attacker floods a server with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing connected online services and sites," according to the firm.

According to an explainer by IT service provider Cloudflare, DDoS attacks employ numerous compromised systems to generate the attack traffic. These compromised systems may include computers and other networked resources.

Also Read: Industrial Production Increases By 4.2 Per Cent In June As Electric Equipment Manufacturing Grows In Double-Digits

Kuldeep is Senior Editor (Newsroom) at Swarajya. He tweets at @kaydnegi.


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