Was a cyber attack really to blame for Musk-Trump interview tech issues? Expert isn’t buying it

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Elon Musk has blamed a “massive” cyber attack for the 40-minute delay to his live interview with former president Donald Trump on X Spaces on Monday night. Jake Moore, global cyber security advisor at cyber security company ESET, told The Independent that Musk’s version of events are “unbelievable” and “theatrical.” Instead, he believes it is far more likely that the servers on Spaces simply couldn’t cope with the volume of people trying to join. “I think Musk may have been a bit too quick to react, a bit too theatrical in his terminology to create a storm on the platform.” open image in gallery A cyber security expert says it’s unlikely X suffered a DDoS attack during the conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump Moore explained that the tell-tale sign of a DDoS attack is when an entire platform suffers an outage, but last night users were still able to access X while being unable to view the feed on Spaces. open image in gallery What many viewers were greeted with when they tried to join the conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump live on Spaces “We also have to remember over a year ago Musk did remove lots of roles from the platform, including security and technical staff, and I do think that would’ve played a part in this technical overload of listeners,” he said.