Okay, this is going to be a big one, so follow along.

1. Ticket Response Times & Contact Info:
   3 – 4 days without a response is completely normal. Account recovery tickets require human review and manual verification by GitHub’s Trust & Safety team. The process typically takes 3 to 7 days, but depending on their queue, it can sometimes stretch to 1 – 2 weeks.

• Will they reply to your email? Yes. GitHub will respond to the email address you manually typed into the support form field, not the email currently attached to the hijacked account. As long as you still have access to the email you provided in the form, you will receive their response there.

• Should you have used another account? No, you did the right thing. Submitting the ticket using the email address historically linked to the account helps them map your identity to the profile.

• Crucial Tip: Do not open more tickets. Submitting duplicate tickets often pushes you back to the end of the queue or merges your requests, which can delay the response even further. Just keep an eye on your spam/junk folder.

2. Is there hope of getting the account back?
   Yes, there is absolutely hope. GitHub deals with this scenario every single day. Even though the attacker changed the password, primary email, and recovery info, GitHub preserves an internal history of the account's details.

To prove you are the rightful owner, GitHub Support will likely ask you for alternative verification factors. Be prepared to provide:

• Billing Information: If you ever paid for GitHub Pro, Copilot, or an organization, providing the transaction ID, invoice number, or the last 4 digits of the card on file is the fastest path to recovery.

• Technical Footprints: They may ask for older SSH key fingerprints you used, specific Personal Access Tokens (PATs) you generated, or specific commit hashes pushed from your local machine.

3. How did this happen if your email and device seem clean?
   This is usually not a "GitHub specific hack," but rather a method of attack that bypasses traditional logins entirely:

• Session Hijacking (Cookie Stealing)This is the most likely culprit. Instead of guessing your password or intercepting your 2FA, attackers use malware (often hidden inside cracked software, questionable browser extensions, or sketchy downloads) that executes in a split second.

• It doesn't steal your password; it steals your active browser session cookies. The attacker then imports these cookies into an "anti-detect browser" that mimics your laptop’s digital fingerprint (screen resolution, OS version, language). When they load GitHub, GitHub thinks it's just you returning to a trusted session, completely bypassing the password and 2FA prompts. Because they didn't log into your Google Account, your Google Activity stays clean.