The majority of the verified accounts that were silenced by Twitter as it dealt with its most prominent hack to date – allegedly by Bitcoin scammers – have been unlocked, the site said, noting that the issue is not yet resolved.
“Most accounts should be able to Tweet again. As we continue working on a fix, this functionality may come and go. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible,” Twitter said in a statement.
Multiple media organizations, businesses, Twitter pundits, celebrities and other blue checks that were affected by the Twitter lockdown heaved a collective sigh of relief on Wednesday evening, at last able to tweet again after being gagged for several hours as the platform sought a fix for the biggest hack in its history.
It’s unclear how the hackers were able to compromise so many verified accounts at once – considering such high-profile ‘victims’ as Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg are supposed to have two-factor authentication – with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey saying the company has yet to figure out precisely what went wrong.
“Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened. We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened,” he said.
Tough day for us at Twitter. We all feel terrible this happened.
We’re diagnosing and will share everything we can when we have a more complete understanding of exactly what happened.
💙 to our teammates working hard to make this right.
The lack of clarity over the nature of the hack has given rise to speculations as to how the hackers broke into the plethora of supposedly well-protected accounts. One of the most popular theories alleges that attackers gained access to an internal employee panel, which allowed them to change or/and disable the multi-factor identification system.
The API was fixed after the last time the API was exploited. This attack is something different. From my own research and seeing the actions twitter is taking its likely true that an Internal Employee Panel was accessed theres even screenshots of the IEP and it being sold pic.twitter.com/YWmOt37GRa
There's a lot of unsubstantiated rumors about a Twitter employee getting hacked and losing access to an admin panel causing all these account takeovers.
While many verified accounts had to turn to backup profiles, struggling to keep their feeds afloat, the impediment triggered celebration among those not bestowed with coveted blue check mark.
Some suggested affected blue checks should ditch Twitter for good and just set up their own platform, or, perhaps, move to Parler, a US-based microblogging service launched in 2018 as an alternative to Twitter. The platform grew especially popular among American conservatives.
