FIDO2 security keys completely locked me out — “Too many attempts” on the very first try, support refused to help

I’m locked out of my Apple ID because my FIDO2 hardware security keys suddenly stopped working. Every time I try to log in, Apple immediately says “Too many attempts” — even on the very first try. Both keys still light up, but the message never changes, and I can’t access anything on my Apple account.

What makes this worse is that Apple’s recovery flow at iforgot.apple.com just loops back to “Insert your security key.” There’s no way to move forward. I called Apple Support twice, and both agents gave me generic answers and then ended the call. No one would escalate it to Account Security or Engineering, even though this is clearly a hardware lockout issue and not user error.

Right now I’m completely locked out of my Apple ID, iCloud, and my devices.

I need Apple to escalate this to Engineering so they can remove or reset the hardware key requirement on my account.

If anyone from Apple is reading this, please acknowledge that a “Too many attempts” error on the first login attemptmeans the key is blocked internally and needs a server-side fix or re-registration path.

Has anyone else had this happen? How did you get Apple to finally take your case seriously?