Elon Musk’s X Botched Its Security Key Switchover, Locking Users Out

We’re seeing reports crossed societal media that users of Elon Musk’s X are getting stuck successful endless loops and, successful immoderate cases, getting locked retired of their X account, pursuing a mandatory two-factor information alteration that seems to person gone wrong.

On October 24, X said in a post that it was asking users who trust connected passkeys aliases hardware information keys (such arsenic Yubikeys) arsenic their method of two-factor authentication to re-enroll utilizing nan x.com domain. (Users who usage an authenticator app are unaffected.)

X said this was portion of an effort to discontinue nan older twitter.com domain, which presently redirects to x.com. That alteration took effect successful May 2024. The problem is that passkeys and information keys are digitally tied to nan aged twitter.com domain and can’t beryllium transferred to x.com. That intends users person to manually un-enroll and re-enroll utilizing nan caller x.com domain.

As portion of nan switchover, X warned that aft November 10, customers would person their accounts locked until they re-enroll aliases take different method of two-factor authentication. 

Now that nan deadline has passed, plentifulness of users are reporting that they’ve been locked retired of their accounts and can’t re-enroll their passkey aliases information key, citing correction messages aliases getting caught successful an endless loop.

This is nan latest rumor to beset X, now owned by Elon Musk aft he bought Twitter, arsenic it was known then, for $44 billion. Since taking complaint of nan societal networking site, nan institution has knowledgeable massive layoffs and countless controversies.

X did not respond to a petition for comment, but Musk, who now owns X, has been posting arsenic usual, presumably unaffected by nan change.