This was scheduled for 8 AM ET (5:30 AM IST). But moments before the interview was supposed to go live, Elon Musk shared the news that X was under a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack.

Because of this attack, the interview got delayed. Musk took to X to share this, he said "There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on . Working on shutting it down. Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later." Due to this unexpected hindrance, the live interview got delayed by 30 minutes and they finally resumed at 8.30 AM.

So what is this DDOS attack that delayed such a highly anticipated interview?

What is a DDOS Attack?

A DDOS attack is a kind of cyber attack. It is a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal operations of an online service, X in this case, by overwhelming it with internet traffic. This can result in the service becoming slow or crashing entirely. According to cybersecurity firm Norton, DDOS attacks flood the targeted server or network with excessive traffic. Because of this, the platform becomes unresponsive.

As per Microsoft, a DDOS attack is one where attackers plan to exhaust an application's resources. It then becomes difficult or even impossible for users to access the service. These attacks are particularly common in industries such as gaming, e-commerce, and telecommunications.

This happened despite the fact that X had been tested with 8 million concurrent listeners earlier in the day to ensure the platform could handle the anticipated traffic during the Trump interview, as per Musk himself.