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

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.)