Maybe it was my mistake to pull the cartooney villains into the discussion. But real life villains are not like that. They are cruel, efficient and calculating, not leaving clues and loose ends hanging around for amateur detectives to be found just out of vanity. The day they do that is the day they can publicly out themselves.

Just assume that everything is at least AES256 level encrypted because any kid who knows how to use a computer can do that. Their systems just most likely do not have regular passwords that can be cracked using brute force combining word lists but most likely long encryption keys stored entirely on other media and even then behind strong passwords.

They are not amateurs. They are trained professionals doing it for money and power, most likely for the powers they do not understand. They are not messing around.