Donald Trump's Interview With Elon Musk on X Begins Late, Tesla CEO Blames 'Cyber Attack' for Delay

New Delhi: Tech mogul Elon Musk interviewed former US President and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on social media platform X on Tuesday, August 13. The interview was conducted on X's audio livestreaming feature called Spaces which over a millions users joined.

Initially, many users encountered a technical glitch while trying to join the audio conversation. The interview, which was originally scheduled to begin at around 8pm ET, finally began after 40 minutes. 

The tech snag was rectified later as users could tune in to the interview on X. A 'Space' for Trump's conversation with Musk was created but many users got 'This Space is not available' message.

As tech glitches plagued the interview, Musk blamed the delay to a 'DDOS attack'.  Musk tweeted that the online platform was experiencing a "massive" denial-of-service attack (DDOS), a federal criminal act that involves flooding a site with errant traffic to overwhelm it and knock it offline.

He said a team was working to mitigate the issue.

Addressing the tech issue, Musk tweeted, “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(sic).”

In another post, the Tesla CEO said, “We tested the system with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier today”.

He added that they would continue with the interview with a smaller number of live listeners and would post the unedited version of the conversation for masses after the interview.

“We will proceed with the smaller number of concurrent listeners at 8:30 ET and then post the unedited audio immediately thereafter,” Musk tweeted.

Outage tracker Downdetector reported a rise in reports of X being inaccessible to users starting before the interview but it could not be immediately verified whether this was due to a malicious attack.

Musk had on August 12 posted on Twitter that the conversation would begin at 8pm (US local time).

Trump had earlier mocked Florida Gov Ron DeSantis when his primary campaign launched with a May 2023 interview on X that was marred by glitches.

What is a DDoS attack?

DDoS stands for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), a malware that targets servers and websites by affecting network services. The malware attempts to exhaust an application’s resources in the process. Usually the cybercriminals behind the attacks overwhelm a site with errant traffic, which leads to poor functioning of a website.

Businesses like gaming, ecommerce, and telecommunications are most prone to these cyberattacks. The attacks can end up compromising online security, sales, and reputation of a business.

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’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,” Microsoft added.