Operation Endgame switched into a new gear this week with public takedowns and arrests of the Russian criminals infiltrating Germany.

About 50 of the servers neutralized this week were in Germany, the authorities said. “In Germany, investigations focused particularly on suspicions of organised extortion and membership of a foreign criminal organization,” according to the federal police and the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office in charge of combatting cybercrime. German authorities also obtained international arrest warrants for the 20 people, “most of them Russian nationals”, and launched search operations, they added.

The report mentions 300 servers total, that operated under 650 domains, which required law enforcement across Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States to work together.

The nation-state level criminal activity reminds me how Russia is still considered a world power not because of its economic state, or even its kinetic weapons systems, but because of its global military intelligence operations formerly known as the KGB. The methods being disabled would have been called Soviet spycraft during the Cold War. Today we treat such dangerous tendrils of Moscow only like random nationals, instead of military intelligence, as they just happen to spread around the world in an organized pattern.

We’ve come a very long way from dropping floppy discs in a forest and Hagbard’s 1989 death, no?

His role allegedly was to take the information stolen in Germany by three others and give it to the KGB on floppy discs. After he and the others were caught (Cuckoo’s Egg), Hagbard mysteriously died in a fire. It was called a suicide yet who really believes that?