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DDoS attack on Twitter, when Musk was going to interview Trump

29 points by craxdevil7 ↗ HN
It’s fascinating to see the recent Twitter disruptions and wonder if they were genuinely caused by a DDoS attack or if the platform simply collapsed under the weight of its own inadequacies. From my perspective, it seems more likely that the issues stemmed from internal problems rather than a targeted attack. With significant staff cuts and infrastructure downsizing under Elon Musk’s leadership, Twitter might just be struggling to handle normal traffic, not some external onslaught. The situation makes me question whether these so-called “DDoS” problems are really just a reflection of the platform’s deteriorating stability.

21 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 71.7 ms ] thread
lobito14
excuses for bad tech. Elon is liar
blowsand
Your statement about an excuse for bad tech is factually wrong.

The X edge teams were indeed responding to quite a number of well coordinated ddos attempts. Arelion, GTT, and a number of other carriers have been assisting in blackholing.

phs318u
Please provide references for these claims or don't claim factuality.
bayarearefugee
Anyone who doesn't like Trump wants as many people to hear his unhinged rambling as possible so I don't understand why enemies would DDoS them.
spinach
I use twitter a fair bit and haven't seen any disruptions - though I use it only in browser, maybe the app has seen some. It seems like only the Spaces part with Trump was overrun and not working which does make Musk's claim seem sus but they got it rather quickly working anyway. Ever since Musk took over there has been an insane amount of doomposting about twitter but it's still going fine.
blackeyeblitzar
I think the doomposting is people trying to manufacture a narrative they wish for. Like they want it of fail so they are repeating things about it nonstop to make that its reputation. It’s sad that tribalism goes so far even here on HN.
blisterpeanuts
Aren't those basically separate systems? I would have thought the Spaces feature runs on its own set of servers, thus might experience outage for whatever reason totally separate from the other Twitter/X functionality.
adrr
"The rest of X appears to be working normally, however, and a source at the company confirmed to The Verge that there wasn’t actually a denial-of-service attack. Another X staffer said there was a “99 percent” chance Elon was lying about an attack."

https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/12/24219121/donald-trump-elo...

Didn't the same thing happened to livestream for Desantis?

pyeri
Might sound a bit ancient and conservative but for this particular use case, the good old Radio technology (MW/SW, AM/FM, etc) is a better candidate than the regular Internet. It's a tad more difficult to hack or DDOS compared to Internet as there is no single point of failure. If you broadcast on a SW frequency, for example, they will have to block/jam it in every single country where those waves traverse.
Zigurd
I have a more complete theory than involves the decline of model trains and stamp collecting, but the malignancy of conspiracy theories these days is also linked to not being confined to shortwave conspiracy theory shows and mimeograph newsletters the way it was in the 1970s.
defrost
The Register has weighed in with a Yeah, Right skeptical attitude:

    The Register has found no evidence of a denial of service attack directed at X. Check Point Software's live cyber threat map does not record unusual levels of activity at the time of writing. NetScout's real-time DDoS map recorded only small attacks on the US.

    If a DDoS was indeed the reason for the delayed start of the event, it appears not to have impacted the rest of X's operations – there were plenty of posts commenting on the problems with the Space occupied by the interview. And Musk was tweeting from the very network said to be under attack.
Elon Musk claims live Trump interview on X derailed by DDoS https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/13/trump_musk_livestream...

They've also thrown shade on the numbers:

    The interview commenced some 40 minutes after its advertised time. Live audience statistics reported 1.1 to 1.3 million attendees during the portions of the event The Register observed – although during the stream Trump claimed that the event had an audience of 60 million or more, exceeding targets of 25 million.
beardyw
It's a Musktruth. A bit like a Trumptruth.
rsynnott
I’m… a little shocked Trump agreed to do this, after the DeSantis fiasco?
JoelJacobson
Why is this [flagged]? Sounds like The Register has plausible reasons to also, like the OP, question if this is genuinely caused by a DDoS attack.
smeary10
Who does Twitter/X use for DDoS mitigation? Akamai? Cloudflare? Anyone know?
Zigurd
"the best part is no part at all"
talkinggod
Twitter uses AWS, Azure, and GCP. They also use Cloudflare. Any of those providers especially Cloudflare would know. My bet is the claim is part of the hype train. and is false. All of those cloud providers can deal with much greater traffic than that "event".