REVIEW: The Ransomware Hunting Team by Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden
A real-life technological thriller about a band of eccentric misfits taking on the biggest cybersecurity threats of our time.
Scattered across the world, an elite team of code-cracking techies is working tirelessly on your behalf to thwart the most notorious 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, especially if its cybersecurity is imperfect, chances are that you’re painfully familiar with the group’s sworn enemy: ransomware. Again and again, these ordinary people, mostly self-taught and often struggling to make ends meet, have outwitted the shadowy networks of hackers and criminal gangs that lock computer networks and extort huge payments in return for the key.The Ransomware Hunting Team is the incredible true story of a band of misfits who have used their extraordinary skills to save millions of ransomware victims from paying billions of dollars to criminals. Working in their free time from bedrooms and back offices, they offer their services pro bono to those whom the FBI, other government agencies, and the private sector are unwilling or unable to help. This book follows the teammates as they respond to dire calls for help—and tracks the ups and downs of their work as they race to rescue precious files and communicate directly with their adversaries. Urgent, uplifting, and entertaining, Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden’s The Ransomware Hunting Team is a real-life technological thriller set in a dangerous new era of cybercrime.
Review
This sounded as if it might be an interesting title. Turns out it is even though I have little knowledge about how these ransomware hunters actually do what they do. I remain in awe of their skills, though.
The book covers the details behind some of these people who labor long and hard to break ransomware codes and save victims from paying increasingly large amounts of money to the gangs – and sometimes individuals – who unleash them on companies and governments (such as the cities of Baltimore and Atlanta). Honestly there was a lot of info on these geeks – so much so that it scared me for them. A bit of how they have managed to break ransomware codes is included in a way that helped me understand it a little but I don’t grasp even half of it. I will say that despite my lack of understanding it, the book is written in such a way that I didn’t feel talked down to nor was I bored. Frightened yes, bored no.
But honestly! Why has it remained so easy for these companies to avoid seeing to the security of their computer systems? Is having cybercrime insurance actually helping to foster more attacks? And I want a cybercrimes police unit like the one that the Netherlands have developed – it is awesome. It not only works but it also employs people on the spectrum whose skills and talents help them look at the issue in different ways.
Dudley and Golden to a great job explaining the issues and stakes in easy to understand terms and making the stories relatable. In this era when computers run just about everything, the risks are only increasing. Early in the book, one hacker is said to have stated that despite the access that he gained to potentially dangerous-if-they’re-hacked systems such as military weapons and nuclear reactors he wouldn’t exploit those because he wasn’t interested in destroying a country – there was no monetary profit in it for him. We can’t be sure that geopolitics with a different view of “profit” won’t eventually change this. I finished the book with a greater understanding of ransomware and a heightened fear of what we may face in the future. B
~Jayne
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