Computer security experts around the world are racing to patch one of the worst software vulnerabilities discovered in years.

LONDON A Florida teen was identified Friday as the mastermind of a scheme earlier this month that commandeered Twitter accounts of prominent politicians, celebrities and technology moguls and scammed people around the globe out of more than $100,000 in Bitcoin. The hack alarmed security experts because of the grave potential of such an intrusion for creating geopolitical mayhem with disinformation. The court documents released Friday show how federal agents tracked down the hackers through Bitcoin transactions and by obtaining records of their online chats. Internal Revenue Service investigators in Washington, D.C., identified two of the defendants by analyzing Bitcoin transactions on the blockchain the universal ledger that records Bitcoin transactions that they had sought to make anonymous, federal prosecutors said. ___This story has been corrected to show that participants in the operation, not the hacker identified as Kirk, discussed it with The New York Times.