‘Tough day for us at Twitter’: Twitter unmutes most blue checks after bitcoin scammer hack, says ‘functionality may come & go’

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. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said 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.

The lack of clarity over the nature of the hack has given rise to speculation as to how the hackers broke into these supposedly well-protected accounts. One popular theory is that they gained access to an internal employee panel, which allowed them to change and/or disable the multi-factor identification system.

Twitter has so far remained silent on these rumors.

While many verified accounts had to turn to their backup profiles, the impediment triggered celebration among those not bestowed with the coveted blue check mark.

“Now the journos are feeling what normal business owners felt during the lockdown,” one tweeted.

Some said the ‘blue check marks’ affected should ditch Twitter for good and just set up their own platform, or perhaps move to Parler, a US-based service launched in 2018 as an alternative to Twitter. The platform has grown especially popular among American conservatives.  

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