The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits' Improbable Crusade to Save the World from Cybercrime

by Renee Dudley, Daniel Golden

Overview

A real-life technological thriller about a band of eccentric misfits taking on the biggest cybersecurity threats of our time.

“What Michael Lewis did for baseball in Moneyball, Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden do brilliantly for the world of ransomware and hackers. Cinematic, big in scope, and meticulously reported, this book is impossible to put down.” —Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author of In Harm’s Way and Horse Soldiers

Scattered across the world, an elite team of code crackers is working tirelessly to thwart the defining cyber scourge of our time. You’ve probably never heard of them. But if you work for a school, a business, a hospital, or a municipal government, or simply cherish your digital data, you may be painfully familiar with the team’s sworn enemy: ransomware. Again and again, an unlikely band of misfits, mostly self-taught and often struggling to make ends meet, have outwitted the underworld of hackers who lock computer networks and demand huge payments in return for the keys.

The Ransomware Hunting Team traces the adventures of these unassuming heroes and how they have used their skills to save millions of ransomware victims from paying billions of dollars to criminals. Working tirelessly from bedrooms and back offices, and refusing payment, they’ve rescued those whom the often hapless FBI has been unwilling or unable to help. Foremost among them is Michael Gillespie, a cancer survivor and cat lover who got his start cracking ransomware while working at a Nerds on Call store in the town of Normal, Illinois. Other teammates include the brilliant, reclusive Fabian Wosar, a high school dropout from Germany who enjoys bantering with the attackers he foils, and his protégé, the British computer science prodigy Sarah White. Together, they have established themselves as the most effective force against an escalating global threat. This book follows them as they put their health, personal relationships, and financial security on the line to navigate the technological and moral challenges of combating digital hostage taking.

Urgent, uplifting, and entertaining, Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden’s The Ransomware Hunting Team is a real-life technological thriller that illuminates a dangerous new era of cybercrime.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374603304
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	10/25/2022
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	92,540
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Renee Dudley is a technology reporter at ProPublica. Previously, as an investigative reporter at Reuters, she was named a 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist for her work uncovering systematic cheating on college admissions tests. She started her career at daily newspapers in South Carolina and New England, and has won numerous journalism honors, including the Eugene S. Pulliam First Amendment Award.

Daniel Golden, a senior editor and reporter at ProPublica, has won a Pulitzer Prize and three George Polk Awards. He is the bestselling author of The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates and Spy Schools: How the CIA, FBI, and Foreign Intelligence Secretly Exploit America’s Universities.

Table of Contents

Introduction: "Are You Indeed a Barbarian?" 3

1 The Man Who Invented Ransomware 17

2 The Superhero of Normal, Illinois 43

3 The Hunters Gather 63

4 The Funny War 85

5 The Price of Obsession 115

6 Stopping STOP 139

7 Ryuk Reigns 155

8 The FBI's Dilemma 169

9 The G-Man and the Dolphin 197

10 Shaking Down a City 215

11 The Extortion Economy 237

12 Lawrence's Truce 271

13 Pipeline to Tomorrow 293

Notes 323

Acknowledgments 343

Index 347

Editorial Reviews

08/22/2022

Journalists Dudley and Golden (Spy Schools) deliver an intriguing profile of volunteer tech experts who work to combat digital extortionists. The story centers on Illinois tech support professional Michael Gillespie, “the most prolific member of the Ransomware Hunting Team, an elite, invitation-only society of about a dozen tech wizards who are devoted to cracking ransomware.” The authors detail how gangs of hackers, many with ties to crime syndicates or hostile foreign governments, target vulnerable computer systems, introducing viruses that encrypt files, then demanding payment for a decryption key. The U.S. government’s response has been hampered, Dudley and Golden explain, by the rigid culture of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, where cooperation with outsiders is discouraged and cybercrime experts are often denigrated as the “Geek Squad.” However, in the aftermath of high-profile ransomware attacks such as the May 2021 Colonial Pipeline incident, which paralyzed fuel distribution on the East Coast, the government has coordinated more closely with recognized experts like Gillespie. Dudley and Golden render their subjects—some of whom endured poverty and bullying in their teens—with warmth and admiration while acknowledging that competition between hacker gangs and ransomware hunters has helped spur more sophisticated viruses and bigger paydays. Readers will put down this engrossing underdog story just long enough to back up their own files. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

05/01/2022

ProPublica reporters Dudley and Golden, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner, respectively, visit a bunch of ordinary folks with extraordinary techie skills: they challenge hackers and criminal gangs worldwide who lock up computer systems and then seek to extort money from businesses, schools, hospitals, government agencies, and others. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

2022-08-16
White and black hats collide, and, as ProPublica reporters Dudley and Golden reveal, the unseen war between them shapes and shakes the world.

“The frequency and the impact of ransomware attacks are widely understated because many victims don’t make them public or inform authorities,” write the authors. Still, they note, the monetary value is colossal, and there is a broad range of victims to choose from. In the early days, through the machinations of a Harvard-educated (“and subsequently Harvard-disavowed”) researcher in primatology, the demands were small: A virus he’d written would infect a computer, demand via an onscreen message that the user send $189 or $378 to Panama, and then restore access to the computer’s files. This early hacker died young, but computer security is less advanced than many believe, and today ransomware bandits are busily infecting not just corporations, but also hospitals, schools, and even city governments, including that of Baltimore. Enter the Ransomware Hunting Team, an ad hoc band of self-anointed saviors from all over the world, who know their foe as if alter egos: mostly young and freelance, interested in money but also the thrill of the game, but who also, in places like Russia and North Korea, “appear…to be weapons in an undeclared cyberwar.” As Dudley and Golden describe the titanic struggle, often waged with sympathy and respect for the bad-guy opponents’ computer skills and vice versa, they observe that the corporate and governmental response has been less than stellar, with the FBI today just as unprepared for cyberwar as it was when Clifford Stoll published The Cuckoo’s Egg in 1989, when black-hat computer mischief was a new thing. In some ways, this book is an update to that distinguished predecessor, though it also enters into the newer realms of the dark web, cryptocurrency, and high-level code-breaking.

An accessible, tautly written account of cyberwarfare in real time.

Kirkus Reviews

"Dudley and Golden do a brilliant job of tracing the back-and-forth between attackers and defenders . . . [They] are highly attuned to the havoc ransomware can wreak . . . Dudley and Golden are most interested in the characters at the center of this fight . . . The book offers lively portraits of these people . . . as it traces the evolution of ransomware into a more professionalized business for organized cartels." —Josephine Wolff, The New York Times Book Review

"[Dudley and Golden] focus as much on people as on the computers . . . Fascinating . . . The ransomware business is complicated, ruthless, and growing fast. Those looking for a guide should start here." —The Economist

"Journalists Dudley and Golden explore with verve and fascinating detail the assorted group of unpaid, self-taught experts in the U.S. and Europe who make it their duty to protect the innocent from ransomware . . . [They create] vivid portraits of several brilliant, occasionally socially awkward members of the loosely organized team . . . Anyone with internet access should find this intriguing, and a little horrifying." —Booklist

"Intriguing . . . Dudley and Golden render their subjects—some of whom endured poverty and bullying in their teens—with warmth and admiration while acknowledging that competition between hacker gangs and ransomware hunters has helped spur more sophisticated viruses and bigger paydays. Readers will put down this engrossing underdog story just long enough to back up their own files." —Publishers Weekly

"[Dudley and Golden] weave a vast and intricate story about a global crime and the ragtag band of volunteers who have assembled to step in where law enforcement was unable or unwilling. Profiles of the ransomware hunters . . . push this book along at a swift pace, adding an interesting human element to a problem that can often seem impenetrable to outsiders. For anyone interested in the modern reality of global cyber-crime, this is a must-read." —CrimeReads

"Dudley and Golden are both respected journalists, and their writing reflects their acclaimed careers. With the pacing of an action-packed thriller, The Ransomware Hunting Team is loaded with page-turning moments . . . [This] is a book that should not be overlooked by anyone who wishes to better understand the complex cyberworld we inhabit." —Micah Cummins, Open Letters Review

"An accessible, tautly written account of cyberwarfare in real time." —Kirkus Reviews

"What Michael Lewis did for baseball in Moneyball, Dudley and Golden do brilliantly for the world of ransomware and hackers. Cinematic, big in scope, and meticulously reported, this book is impossible to put down. Welcome to a brand-new world of geniuses, crooks, capers and global intrigue that you’re already part of, and likely didn’t even know it." —Doug Stanton, New York Times bestselling author of In Harm’s Way and Horse Soldiers

“If you’ve ever used a computer, you need this book. Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden have burrowed into the digital underworld to reveal the unlikely heroes saving the rest of us from cyber chaos. The Ransomware Hunting Team is nonfiction with the narrative engine of a thriller.” —Mitchell Zuckoff, New York Times bestselling author of Fall and Rise and 13 Hours

"A deeply reported dive into the rising tide of digital exploitation gangs, their nefarious methods, and the scraggly band of volunteers who are fighting to keep us safe. Totally engrossing." —Julia Angwin, author of Dragnet Nation

"Meet the whitehats who unravel the baffling malware infesting our connected computers. Unsung and unpaid, these clever computer jocks rescue individuals, businesses, and governments." —Clifford Stoll, author of The Cuckoo's Egg and other books

"The Ransomware Hunting Team is a tour de force of investigative reporting, with more twists, turns and shadowy figures than any spy thriller. Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden take you deep inside the hidden universe of ransomware hackers and heroes—and some who may or may not be both. It’s a breathtaking true tale that’s astonishing and disturbing—and irresistibly readable." —Joanne Lipman, bestselling author of That's What She Said and former editor in chief of USA Today

"Dudley and Golden take us behind the firewall and into the fire—Ransomware—that's about to engulf everyone who owns a computer. They put flesh and bones on the 1s and 0s by decrypting the human stories of the cyber attackers, their victims, and, most of all, the civilian sleuths around the world who've become unexpected superheroes of the cyber realm. Whether you're a layman or a lawman, this is a must read." —Frank Figliuzzi, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI and author of The FBI Way

From the Publisher