Fact Check: Did hackers lock Elon Musk's Starlink stations and demand millions in Bitcoin?
HAWTHORNE, CALIFORNIA: According to a claim circulating on social media platforms, Elon Musk’s Starlink ground satellite stations worldwide have been hacked, with the hackers demanding $500 million in Bitcoin and threatening to shut them down. The claim has sparked speculation among online users, prompting a fact-check into it.
Claim: Hackers locked Elon Musk’s Starlink ground stations worldwide
A viral post on X (formerly Twitter) has claimed that hackers have locked Musk’s Starlink ground satellite stations worldwide, demanding a ransom of millions in Bitcoin and threatening to shut them down.
According to the post, the hacker group announced, “We have locked all Starlink ground stations worldwide. Pay $500 million in Bitcoin, or the world goes offline!"
In response, the tech mogul allegedly replied, “Check your firmware. While you were writing that ransom note, Neural-Auto-Patch released a micro-update that routed your entire operation through a dead-end satellite in deep orbit. Thanks for testing our hotfix."
The post has garnered more than two and a half million views as of this writing, drawing mixed reactions from online users, with many appearing to believe the claim to be true, while others questioned its authenticity and called for verification.
Fact Check: No such exchange took place between Elon Musk and hackers
The claim, however, is false, as no such exchange took place between the hacker group and the Tesla CEO. No credible reports suggest that a hacker group locked Starlink stations and threatened to turn them off.
If the claim was true, prominent news media outlets would have widely covered it, but a search on Google yielded no relevant results. A search on Musk’s social media accounts, including X, also did not reveal any posts about Starlink stations being hacked.
A fact check by Grok stated, “No, this is not true. It's a fictional satirical post with no supporting evidence from news sources or Elon Musk's account."
"No Starlink ground stations were locked, no $500M Bitcoin ransom occurred, and the ‘Neural-Auto-Patch’ reply never happened. The video is just a meme edit pairing Elon with generic hacker graphics," it added.
Starlink's growing global network
The Starlink satellites were first launched in 2019 by Musk’s SpaceX, and as of today, the network has approximately 10,397 operational satellites and is connected to the terrestrial internet infrastructure.
The network accounts for approximately 75% of all active maneuverable satellites in Earth's orbit and currently has more than 12 million subscribers.
