Elon Musk and Donald Trump hosted a live chat at X Spaces on Monday night that covered topics from global warming to electric vehicles to the national debt.
Live streamingoriginally set to begin at 8:00 PM EST, was delayed by more than 40 minutes, for which Musk blamed a cyber security attack on the platform.
There seems to be a massive DDOS attack on ?. Working to close it.
At worst, we'll continue with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
Musk Following with a post saying that Team X had “tested the system with 8 million simultaneous listeners” without any problems, and they will continue with “a smaller number of simultaneous listeners” at 8:30 PM ET and then “to post the unedited audio immediately “after. Musk was clear that this was not an interview, but a “conversation”.
Related: Elon Musk Frantically Emails Employees to 'Fix' Livestream: Report
What exactly is a DDoS attack?
Musk claimed that X fell victim to a cyber security attack at the start of the live stream.
Lisa Plaggemier, executive director of National Cyber Security Alliance tells Entrepreneur that a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack occurs “when multiple compromised systems flood a target server with overwhelming traffic, causing it to slow down or crash.”
“It is a highly disruptive attack that can paralyze websites, applications or entire networks, leading to significant disruption and financial loss for businesses,” said Plaggemier.
While it's impossible to confirm whether or not that's what happened on X Monday night, Plaggemier says a DDoS attack “could certainly cause the kind of delay seen in live streaming events” making it difficult for the live stream to maintain a connection.
“High-profile organizations such as financial institutions, media companies and large e-commerce platforms are frequent targets of DDoS attacks,” she said. “DDoS attacks have become increasingly common, with thousands occurring every day across the globe. They are one of the most used tactics by cybercriminals due to their relative simplicity and the widespread damage they can cause.”
Technical difficulties persist in X
Although Musk was quick to claim that Monday's debacle was down to bad actors, this isn't the first time X has had trouble with its live streaming software.
“We're just testing the live video feature so we can see if it works and we can modify it accordingly,” Musk said in May 2023 after first testing live streaming technology following its acquisition of the platform formerly known as Twitter in November 2022.
Later that month, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis chose to announce his campaign for President during a live broadcast on X, instead of traditional television. However, the platform ran into massive technical difficulties when it was delayed by over 20 minutes after 600,000 listeners tuned in at once.
Related: Elon Musk makes a case for Tesla on X Livestream with Donald Trump
Then, in September, Musk tried live streaming show up again on a visit to Eagle Pass on the US-Mexico border. With nearly five million users tuned in, the video froze after four minutes, prompting Musk to email employees, “Please fix this.”
According to X data, Musk and Trump's live stream on Monday had about 73 million views.