Elon Musk’s much-anticipated interview of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump began with a 45-minute delay on X. Musk claimed that a “massive DDOS attack” was behind the site crash. The interview, which was earlier scheduled for 8 pm, began after a 45-minute delay, with Musk beginning the conversation by claiming that opponents attacked the site to prevent Donald Trump from being heard.
Keeping the worst-case scenario in mind, the technology giant said the social media platform will allow only a small number of live listeners and will post the conversations online later.
“It appears there has been a massive DDoS attack on X. I am working on shutting it down. In the worst case scenario, we will proceed with a small number of live listeners and post the conversation later,” the Tesla chief said.
In another post he said, “We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners today”.
What is a DDoS attack?
DDoS stands for “Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack.” According to cybersecurity firm Fortinet, it’s a cybercrime in which an attacker floods a target or its surrounding infrastructure with internet traffic in order to prevent users from accessing connected online services and sites.
According to Microsoft, “During a DDoS attack, a series of bots, or botnets, flood a website or service with HTTP requests and traffic. Essentially, many computers attack a single computer during the attack, shutting out legitimate users. As a result, service may be delayed or disrupted for long periods of time.”
“It’s possible that hackers can infiltrate your database during an attack, and access sensitive information. DDoS attacks can exploit security vulnerabilities and target any endpoint that is publicly accessible via the Internet,” Microsoft added.
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