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The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits' Improbable Crusade to Save the World from Cybercrime Audiobook
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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, 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." —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. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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"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
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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 -
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
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About the Authors
Daniel Golden won a Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his Wall Street Journal series on admissions preferences at elite colleges, which became the basis for his bestselling book The Price of Admission. He edited a series about how US companies dodge taxes by moving their headquarters overseas, which won Bloomberg News’s first and only Pulitzer Prize in 2015. In 2011 he was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his Bloomberg News series about for-profit colleges exploiting veterans, low-income students, and the homeless.