This talk will explore the evolution of ransomware from early experimentation by lone hackers into a complex, global ecosystem capable of disrupting critical services and paralysing entire societies.

How did ransomware develop from pranksters tinkering in childhood bedrooms to powerful gangs capable of paralysing entire societies? What role did criminal, grey, and legal enterprises - and academia(!) - play in facilitating cybercrime? Should we conceive the “criminal’ ecosystem more broadly when formulating responses to the threat posed by ransomware? 

Anja Shortland discusses her book “We Know You Can Pay a Million: The Dark Economy of Hacking and Ransomware” with Will Lyne, Head of Economic and Cybercrime at the Metropolitan Police.

Speakers:

Professor Anja Shortland is a Professor of Political Economy. Anja studies private governance in the world’s trickiest markets: hostages, fine art, antiquities, and ransomware—and how people live, trade, and invest in complex and hostile territories. Although often based on data analysis, her work usually cuts across disciplinary boundaries adopting techniques and insights from sociology, engineering, geography, politics, international relations and economics. Anja was an Engineering and Economics undergraduate at Oxford and then did her Masters and PhD in International Relations at the LSE. Before coming to King's she worked as a lecturer in Economics at Leicester, a Reader in Economics at Brunel University and as a consultant to the World Bank.

Will Lyne is currently studying part-time for a PhD at the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology, focusing on cyber and economic serious and organised crime threats. Will has worked in the National Crime Agency for 15 years. From 2011 to 2013, Will worked in Afghanistan, delivering counter-narcotics investigations with local, military, and international partners, before joining the National Cyber Crime Unit in 2013. From 2016 to 2020, Will was an international liaison officer assigned to the FBI’s Cyber Division in Washington DC, USA, and, on return to the UK, was the head of cyber intelligence, leading a range of multidisciplinary teams that lead, support, and coordinate the national response to the most serious cyber threats. Most recently, Will was a deputy director with responsibility for Investigations and Intelligence management. A 2008 graduate of University College London and a 2018 graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Will graduated from the College of Policing Executive Leadership Programme in 2025. 

 

This event is open to staff, students, and external attendees.