True crime with technical credibility: the secret collective of hackers, ex-criminals, investigators, and journalists who've spent years fighting ransomware from the inside finally tell their stories, with real DMs from gang operators, screenshots of dark web forum conversations, and a complete ransom negotiation walkthrough.

Anchored by Jon DiMaggio's account of infiltrating LockBit and the FBI call warning him the gang had put a target on his back, this cybersecurity exposé is testimony from inside the ransomware wars, not coverage of them.

Ransomware has shut down hospitals, pipelines, and governments. You've read the news coverage. This is the other side of it. Ransomed World is a first-person account of the ransomware wars told by nine people who've been living them. 

Inside the book, contributors share what they saw and did:

• A researcher develops an online relationship with a notorious hacker, only to find his life under threat
• A teenager runs one of the world's largest stolen credit card scams before renouncing his life of crime
• A cryptocurrency analyst helps uncover the identity of a cyber gang member by tracking the flow of dark money
• A Ukrainian college student performs hacks for hire to pay for school before getting roped into a nefarious scheme he can't escape
• Jon DiMaggio opens and ties the book together with his account of infiltrating LockBit, including the FBI call warning him the gang had put a target on his back

This isn't journalism about the ransomware world. It's testimony from inside it.