This data was allegedly extracted using an exploit in the Twitter public API sometime in early 2022.

The seller could be lying about that, but there is relatively strong circumstantial evidence that suggests they are telling the truth.

What’s the evidence?

It’s moot anyway, since they can always filter their stolen databases by potential methods of exfiltration, so the dump looks like it only used a certain vulnerability.

> What’s the evidence?

To be honest the evidence for anything in this discussion is circumstantial and probably spurious at best.

All we know for sure is that someone is attacking Twitter via blackmail via hacking just after Twitter released bad PR for some of the worlds most powerful hacking organisations.

All the skeptic comments in this thread seem to worry about the veracity of the claims, but that’s irrelevant to the question of would FBI/CIA retaliate.