Welp, the Twitter hacker is reportedly a 17-year-old in Florida

UPDATE: July 31, 2020, 12:45 p.m. PDT 

The Department of Justice announced Friday that it had charged three people for perpetrating the Twitter hack. 

A joint law enforcement investigation in which authorities “followed the money” allowed them to identify a 19-year-old in the U.K., a 22-year-old in Orlando, FL, and a minor it declined to identify who is under the custody of local Florida authorities. 

The U.K. hacker has been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and the intentional access of a protected computer. The Orlando attacker seems to have played a more minor role; he was charged with “aiding and abetting the intentional access of a protected computer.”

The DOJ’s statement emphasized that, despite mysterious hacker personas, cyber crimes are not anonymous. It provided more insight into how it tracked down the people responsible. It “analyzed the blockchain and de-anonymized bitcoin transactions allowing for the identification of two different hackers.”

“This case se