The hacker @accounttransfers had access to the account and modified the display name and about sections. What you seen there was not really indicative of a blocked account. I am not sure what they were trying to do.
Perhaps, they were not really prepared for the backlash of compromising a high profile account and were trying to "legitimize" their activity as a psuedo white-hat penetration test. Only problem is that you don't pen test without consent and legal contracts in a typical centralized organization so there are definately issues with the ethics of this individual in my humble opinion.
This was not a mere front-end compromise. It was a full compromise but @samhillstone's saving Grace was that he had powered up which requires time to convert to Steem. This allowed the account to be recovered before said hacker was able to steal the Steem. I do think he may have got his hands on the SBD but am not sure.
Yes I realize it was a full hack. My only question was how was the account suspended in a decentralized platform.
I am not aware of any mechanism for account suspension on the Steem blockchain but maybe the devs have some sort of method. I don't believe the account was actually suspended to be honest.
I think the hacker just made it appear that way so as to give the impression that the user was being penalized for their poor security practice as a smokescreen for what the hacker was really doing which is to buy time so he could power down.
That's what I believe happened and let, if so, glad it didn't work out. Nevertheless, it is a good thing, in a sense, as now security awareness is in the forefront of many a Steemians minds.