Dudley and Golden dig deeply into the emotional and financial tolls on people like Gillespie, who insists on offering his services to victims at no charge.

Though the general idea is easy to grasp—criminals encrypt the target’s files, then ask for money to decrypt them again—the nuts and bolts of cybercrime are often baffling to the uninitiated. Renee Dudley and Daniel Golden, a pair of journalists, have written a good introduction to the subject. They focus as much on people as on the computers.

Explains to the reader a major struggle at the center of the fight against ransomware.

Intriguing.

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.

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.