What is the DDoS attack that halted Elon Musk's interview with Donald Trump on X?
Elon Musk, X
Donald Trump's interview with Elon Musk on X (formerly Twitter) was marred by a cyberattack, according to the platform's CEO, asit was delayed by almost 40 minutes.
Musk informed that a massive DDoS attack had taken place on X which forced the wait when thousands of listeners had tuned in on Monday (Aug 12) to hear the former US president.
"There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on X. Working on shutting it down," Musk, the world's richest man, wrote on the platform.
"Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later," he added.
There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on đ. Working on shutting it down.
Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later. â Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024
What is a DDoS attack?
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DDoS stands for 'Distributed Denial-of-Service'attack where the target server is flooded by the high volume of traffic that makes it difficult for the website or in this particular case, X, to function properly.
According to Cloudflare, thelargest content delivery network in the world, "DDoS attacks achieve effectiveness by utilising multiple compromised computer systems as sources of attack traffic".
In simple words, imagine a home with a driveway. The owner is able to take out their car every day to go to the office or run errands but one day, a mean person decides to park 100 cars in the driveway and the street. Now, it becomes difficult for the owner to leave the house to go about their business.
The 100 cars are the bots that are usually directed to a target network while the driveway is your internet which the network cannot surf due to the excessive load.
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What happens during a DDoS attack?
As legitimate users are pushed out during a DDoS attack, the services offered by the target network can be delayed or otherwise disrupted for a length of time.
How tomitigate a DDoS attack?
There are several ways to mitigate a DDoS attack. One of the oldest ways is to reroute the traffic to a null route, or blackhole, and drop it from the network.
Secondly, one can limit the number of requests a server accepts over a certain time window might mitigate the attack. In the case of X, Musk stated that the interview would go ahead with a limited number of listeners after the attack which suggests that a 'rate limiting' fix was applied.
A Web Application Firewall (WAF) protects in mitigating a layer sevenDDoS attack. It puts WAF between the internet and an origin server with the former acting as a reverse proxy.
(With inputs from agencies)