Authorities in the Netherlands moved swiftly this week against one of the largest collections of compromised machines uncovered in recent years. The joint effort by Dutch police and the National Cyber Security Centre dismantled infrastructure that controlled more than 17 million infected devices worldwide. Those devices fed a residential proxy network used for criminal activity. The operation targeted 200 servers hosted inside the country. Police seized the hardware from a commercial provider. The provider then pulled the plug after confirming the servers supported illegal operations. No arrests have been announced. The focus stayed on the technical takedown. A security researcher first spotted the sprawling network and reported it to the NCSC. That tip triggered the investigation. Officials quickly traced command-and-control resources back to Dutch soil. The scale stunned even seasoned investigators. Routers. Smartphones. Tablets. Internet-connected cameras.…