Recently, a massive cyber attack derailed Elon Musk’s much anticipated interview with the Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump on X. The interview, hailed as Trump’s comeback on X, was scheduled to start at 8 p.m. However, it began after a delay of 45-minutes. Musk claimed that it was a massive ‘DDoS’ attack which led to the site crash. During his conversation with trump, he claimed that his adversaries attacked the site to prevent him from being heard.
Not The First Time..
Earlier, during the 2020 elections, Trump’s account was withheld on X, which was then known as Twitter. Later on, after Musk acquired ownership of the social media network, it was restored.
Nonetheless, Trump has avoided posting on X and has been using his own platform, “Truth Social,” to connect with his followers. With the recent hack, Musk took to X and commented that in worst case scenario, they’ll have to limit the live audience and upload the conversation later.
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.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
What’s DDoS Attack?
DDoS attack basically stands for “Distributed Denial-of-Service Attack.” The cybersecurity company Fortinet describes it as a cybercrime when the attacker overloads the target or the infrastructure around it with internet traffic in an attempt to block consumers from accessing related websites and online services.
While according to Microsoft, “During a DDoS attack, a series of bots, or botnet, floods a website or service with HTTP requests and traffic. Essentially, multiple computers storm one computer during an attack, pushing out legitimate users. As a result, service can be delayed or otherwise disrupted for a length of time.”
It added, “It’s possible that hackers can also infiltrate your database during an attack, accessing sensitive information. DDoS attacks can exploit security vulnerabilities and target any endpoint that is reachable, publicly, through the internet.” While as per IT Service provider, Cloudflare, DDoS attack basically uses numerous compromised systems to generate attack traffic.
Overall, all such events indicate that democracy in U.S.A, is itself in turmoil and the upcoming elections hardly give confidence of being ‘democratic.’
