Pierluigi Paganini
August 13, 2024
Elon Musk claims that a massive DDoS attack caused problems with the announced interview with Donald Trump on the X platform Monday night.
“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.” said Musk in a message on X.
Many users reported that they were not able to access the livestream platform.
Musk was forced to delay the live stream of the interview, he added that a malicious traffic of hundreds of gigabits saturated the server of his company.
“As this massive attack illustrates, there’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say,” Musk added.
The Associated Press reported that some X users said the root cause of the problem was the massive audience attempting to view the stream, while others speculated that the issues were caused by a nation-state attack.
Michael Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general, suggested that the scale of the DDoS attack likely had backing from a nation-state actor
Last week, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign announced it was hacked, a spokesman attributed the attack to foreign sources hostile to the United States. The presidential campaign believes that Iran-linked threat actors may be involved in the cyber operation that is aimed at stealing and distributing sensitive documents. At this time, no specific evidence was provided.
The media outlet POLITICO first reported the hack, it became aware of the security breach after receiving emails from an anonymous account with documents from inside Trump’s operation.
The Trump campaign cited an incident that occurred in June where an Iran-linked APT, Mint Sandstorm, sent a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking campaign official from a compromised account.
The campaign cited a Microsoft report published on Friday that linked Iranian hackers to the spear phishing email sent to an official on a presidential campaign.
“Recent activity suggests the Iranian regime — along with the Kremlin — may be equally engaged in election 2024,” states Microsoft’s report.
On July 22, POLITICO began receiving emails from an anonymous source identified only as “Robert,” who used an AOL account. The emails contained alleged internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official, including a research dossier on Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, dated February 23. The dossier, a 271-page document, outlined Vance’s public record and criticisms of Trump, labeling some as “POTENTIAL VULNERABILITIES.” The hacker also shared a research document on Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and claimed to have various documents related to Trump’s legal issues and internal campaign discussions. The source advised against probing their methods of obtaining the documents, citing potential legal risks. This incident represents a significant security breach for Trump’s campaign.
The National Security Council condemned any attempts to undermine U.S. democratic institutions and emphasized the risks of interference in Presidential elections by foreign actors.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations has denied any accusation.
Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon
(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Elon Musk)
