Twitter’s SMS Two-Factor Authentication Is Melting Down

Users are leaving the site in droves following two weeks of chaos. Many are looking at their accounts, checking their security settings, and getting their data. Some users are reporting that they can't get two-factor authentication codes over the phone because the texts don't come or they are late.

Users could lose control of their accounts due to the glitchy two-factor codes. They can't make changes to their security settings or download their data using the access feature of the social network. There is an early indication that troubles within the infrastructure are bubbling to the surface, as a result of the situation.

Some users may not have reason to test the mechanism if they rely on an authenticator app or physical token. Since the weekend, users have been self- reporting issues on the service, and WIRED confirmed that on some accounts, the texts are hours delayed or not at all. Less than two weeks ago, the company laid off half of its workers. Engineers, operations specialists, IT staff, and security teams have been stretched thin trying to adapt and build new features for the new owner.

According to reports, the company may have laid off too many employees too quickly and has been trying to hire back some of them. Musk has said that he is disabling some parts of the platform. He said that part of today would be turning off the services. Less than 20% of the time is needed for the social network to work.

WIRED's request for comment about the problems with the two-factor codes was not returned. Musk didn't reply to the request.

People could be locked out of their accounts if there is a temporary outage of multifactorAuthentication. Kenneth White is a security engineer and co-director of the OpenCrypto Audit Project. Large-scale changes to the web services that have been announced could be to blame for the issue that so many people are reporting.

Many people rely on the mechanism and security researchers agree that it's better than nothing. Users are at risk even if there are intermittent or sporadic outages.

Over the years, the system has had problems. We are looking into account verification codes not being delivered via phone call. We will keep you up to date as we fix this. The company stated that they have more work to do with fixing verification code delivery. We appreciate your patience while we work on this, and we are sorry for the frustration this has caused. We want to get it sorted for those of you who are not receiving a code.