In Pittsburgh, David J. Hickton, a gray haired U.S. lawyer in a clear dark suit, stepped out before an American flag to declare the feds’ latest triumph against on-line crime. “We’ve dismantled a cyber-hornet’s nest of criminal hackers, which was considered by many to be impenetrable,” he said. “We’re in the procedure for rounding up and charging the hornets.” By the following morning, more than 70 individuals around the world was charged, detained or sought in what the Department of Justice called “the biggest unified international law enforcement effort ever directed at an on-line cybercriminal newsgroup.”

The trail of offenses was huge, with one member undermining firms including Sony and Microsoft and another swiping information from more than 20 million sufferers. Hickton said Darkode introduced “one of the most serious dangers to the integrity of information on computers in America and all over the world.”

Two weeks after, “Sp3cial1st,” the primary administrator of Darkode, posted a retaliatory statement on a fresh web site–underscoring the feds’ challenge to police the Internet. “Most of the staff is complete, alongside senior members,” Sp3cial1st wrote. “It seems the raids focused on just additional individuals or folks which were retired from the scene for a long time. The newsgroup is going to be back.” He vowed the organization would regroup on the Web’s deepest, most impenetrable area, the Darknet–a space where anyone, including offenders, can remain essentially anonymous. And the Darknet could never be shut down–thanks, handily, to the feds, who are funding its increase and created it.