Elon Musk claims ‘massive DDOS attack’ on X during Donald Trump interview

X owner Elon Musk has claimed that a “massive DDOS (distributed denial-of-service) attack” on the social media platform affected his interview with former president Donald Trump.

The billionaire entrepreneur was due to interview the Republican presidential nominee at 10am AEST, but users ran into issues when trying to access the platform formerly known as Twitter.

The site showed that the page was “not available” shortly after the scheduled start for some users, though about 214,000 people appeared to have joined successfully.

Minutes before the event, Mr Musk posted that he was holding a conversation with Trump, not an interview, adding: “Nobody is quite themselves in an interview, so it’s hard to understand what they’re really like.”

“There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X,” Musk wrote in an X post, referring to a type of cyber attack in which a server or network is flooded with traffic in an attempt to shut it down.

“Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.”

He said minutes later: “We will proceed with the smaller number of concurrent listeners at 8:30 ET and then post the unedited audio immediately thereafter.”

Ahead of the event, Mr Musk had written: “Am going to do some system scaling tests tonight & tomorrow in advance of the conversation.”

Trump’s access to his account, @realDonaldTrump, was restored a month into Mr Musk’s ownership of X after being suspended by the platform’s previous owners following the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol, citing concerns he would incite violence.

He returned to X on Monday morning, local time, for the first time in a year, posting a video highlighting his claim without evidence that the four criminal prosecutions he faces are politically motivated.

He quickly followed with a half-dozen other posts, reviving an account that served as a main method of communication in previous campaigns and his four years in the White House, including his followers’ January 6 attack.

Trump tells Musk about assassination attempt

The interview finally began after Mr Musk announced they would only let a small number of X users listen in to prevent the system crashing again. 

He apologised for the late start and blamed a “massive attack” that overwhelmed the company’s system.

During the wide-ranging chat, Trump recalled his assassination attempt in vivid detail and blamed the incident on “a lack of coordination”. 

On July 13, a man hiding on a nearby roof opened fire at the former president while he was addressing a crowd in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Trump was wounded when a bullet tore his ear, but he told Musk the outcome could have been much worse.

“If I had not turned my head, I would not be talking to you right now — as much as I like you,” Trump told X’s owner. 

The US Secret Service, charged with protecting high level government officials and political candidates, was slammed for not checking locations near the rally for potential shooters.

“There was a lack of coordination,” Trump said. 

“Everybody understands that building should have been covered.”

Trump said he will return to Butler, Pennsylvania, the scene of the assassination attempt, later in the presidential election campaign.