In the absence of any hard information, two broad narratives have emerged to explain the arrests. The first is that this is essentially a case of espionage, that they knowingly or unwittingly divulged state secrets to the Americans. The second is that this is instead one of the regular ‘silovik struggles’ take place within and around the security agencies, over resources, seniority or personality. The two need not, however, be mutually exclusive.

There are two versions of cooperation and a high-ranking FSB officer “Humpty Dumpty.” According to the first, Mikhailov was charged to establish who the “Anonymous International”, and find out, he led them to work, which provided substantial benefits to all participants. Blackmail officials and businessmen of their personal correspondence brought huge dividends.

According to another version, the original “Humpty Dumpty” was created with the participation of the aforementioned persons. But both versions say that the basic ideology of the hacker group was “business” – extortion of money from high-ranking officials.