#operation endgame

[theviciouskind]

ADAM SCOTT as MAGICIAN | Operation: Endgame — 2010

[the-wisper-report]

Hooray For Our Side

I feel like I do nothing but report on new vulnerabilities, new leaks, new breaches, DNS outages and otherwise negative results to negative circumstances. But today there is good news: Operation Endgame’s latest disruption.

First seen in May of 2024, the cooperative initiative between Europol and other law enforcement agencies on a global scale was responsible for taking down IcedID, SystemBC and others in what became a shutdown of over a hundred servers, arrests of many High Value Targets and freezing illegal assets. A second campaign, in May of this year, took down even more, focused on malware families such as Lactrodectus, HijackLoader and Trickbot. 300 servers worldwide, issued arrest warrants for 20 new targets, 650 domains neutralized.

And now, in its third ‘season’, Operation Endgame has successfully disrupted Rhadamanthys Stealer, Venom RAT and the Elysium botnet. Over a thousand servers have been taken down along with 20 more domains. In all of these cases, millions were seized in cryptocurrency funds, and hundreds of thousands of victims, at the very least, were defended. Most of whom may not have known they were infected with anything at all.

Ransomware is arguably the biggest threat to global digital traffic, with malware families such as these being among the top vectors for its delivery. And while they won’t disappear completely – I covered the resurgence of Lactrodectus not that long ago, in fact – disruptions of this magnitude should nevertheless be celebrated.

Cybersecurity faces challenges on both sides of the fight. Threat actors have the advantage of failure, meaning that if a thousand attacks net only a hundred infections, that’s still considered a successful campaign. Whereas SOC teams that fail to do their job even once face losing them entirely. And it’s not like threat actors just give up. As I mentioned, Lactrodectus returned, and quickly. After disruption in May, it was being reported as active again in July. I have no doubt that Rhadamanthys and Venom RAT will follow the same pattern; we’ll see them again.

And therein lies the other challenge: users. People will always fall for phishing, they’ll always try to cut corners somewhere and leave themselves vulnerable to compromise, they’ll fail to update patches that would otherwise keep these things out. It’s a never ending, uphill battle that isn’t always necessarily their fault. Even the most cautious among us can be fooled. Attack campaigns are getting more clever and sophisticated, automation via AI means that there are no ‘off’ hours, and we’re moving into the season where social engineering will shift focus onto holiday related exploitation.

Still, this is a big win and deserves recognition as such. If I may make a Tron reference again, in the words of Kevin Flynn, exhausted and overwhelmed but not defeated: hooray for our side.

Posted on LinkedIn, 11/13/25

[shiftingmuse]

The Hierophant x Father Joseph MacAvoy -

"A-are ye nae listening to me, I-I'm nae okay!" - Joseph

"Uh-huh...I heard ya'the first time sweetheart." - Hiero

[ace-cf-cups]

I tried out this fun prompt generator yesterday and the prompt it gave me was "Everything about her was a lie", so I ran with it – literally 😁 – and that's how my first David/Hiero ficlet was born)

Hope someone likes this 😅

~~~

Everything about her was a lie.

Her saccharine smiles, her bouncy tight blonde curls, her high-pitched childlike giggles.

Her style, as if she was a cute 1950s secretary and not a cold-blooded killer who could kill you in at least six different ways using the most ordinary, seemingly unweaponizeable items at hand.

Even her name.

David spent his whole life working with information, and as a result knew that there was very little truth in the world and it was usually buried under a load of lies.

He also knew that only truth could be trusted, and as such rarely trusted anyone or anything other than himself.

Everything about Hierophant was a lie.

His instincts screamed at him to get away from her, to not get attached, to do what he does best and disappear without a trace ( even though he had a feeling she would find him, eventually... and he wasn't sure how he felt about that ).

And yet.

When he wakes up, gradually and not jerking upright like he usually does for the first time in a very long while, having slept through more hours than he usually gets in a week, feeling content, relaxed and warm not just from the body beside him but from something swelling in his chest, a hot wave of a feeling he doesn't know the name of rising up inside of him and spreading throughout his body, his limbs, to the very tips of his fingers and toes and chasing away the stress and tension and injury induced ache that settled deep in his muscles such a long time ago the loss of it feels bittersweet...

When he feels her curls tickling his neck from where the comfortable, not too heavy and not too light, just-right weight of her head rests somewhere between his shoulder and chest, her body pressed against his side in a way that makes them feel like two pieces of a puzzle, perfect fit, her hand wrapped around the cool chain around his neck, holding him in place ( is it the assassin in her, the instinct to keep her victim where she needs them to be talking? is it the little girl that never felt safe, never felt the loving embrace of a parent or warmth of a cuddle going hand in hand with a bed time story? is it the woman who can't trust herself or her partners?.. might be all of them... or might be none of them, and he is just overanalyzing a simple unconscious gesture, his work being his life for so long, he can't quite turn it off even half-asleep ), holding the key to his heart...

When be blinks his eyes open to watch sunlight fall through the uncurtained window on her face, play with her hair, highlight her lashes, to see the small smile curling her blood red lips, her nose scrunch adorably as the sunlight pokes her closed eyes, trying to wake her, and she turns her head to bury her face into him with a sleepy noise of protest...

The last thing he wants to do is get up and leave and never cross paths with her again.

Everything about Hierophant is a lie, including that sleepy noise of protest ( she's been awake longer than him, he can feel it in her breathing, in the subtle tension of her body, quite unlike the looseness of sleep ), and yet David can't help falling for her.

[chippedcupwrites]

"Giggly. Cute. Fucking nut. Watch out."

"Sweet but Psycho" │ a Hierophant fanvid 🔪💘

[rumbelle-scream]

Emilie de Ravin as The Hierophant | Operation: Endgame

[andyridgeley]

Bob Odenkirk doing clap push ups in Operation Endgame

[itsmecartoonistgirl]

he is fucking struggling