Start the Week

Original version

BBC Radio 4 LW

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday

BBC Radio 4 FM

Start the Week: Hacking and cybercrime

Hacking and cybercrime

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Hacking and cybercrime

Tom Sutcliffe with Scott Shapiro, Alice Hutchings and Jenny Radcliffe.

Scott Shapiro, Alice Hutchings and Jenny Radcliffe explore the world of hacking and cybercrime, with Tom Sutcliffe.

Just how safe is the online world? Yale Professor of Law and Philosophy Scott Shapiro delves into cybersecurity in his book, Fancy Bear Goes Phishing. The book’s title derives from the exploits of ‘Fancy Bear’, an elite unit of the Russian military intelligence that hacked the US Democratic National Committee in 2016. From a bored graduate student who accidentally crashed the nascent internet, to cyber criminals and bot farms, Shapiro looks at the dark history of the information age.

Dr Alice Hutchings first began researching cybercrime in the late 1990s, while working in industry, and is now Director of the Cambridge Cybercrime Centre. She argues that the romanticised image of the underground hacker as an anti-authoritarian ‘lone wolf’ who possesses technological wizardry is outdated. Hacking has become industrialised with criminals able to buy ‘off-the-shelf’ tools to infect computers. 

While hackers constantly look to exploit vulnerabilities within the technology, one of the major weak points are users themselves. Jenny Radcliffe’s job is to expose the flaws and weaknesses in security operations. In People Hacker she explains how she uses a blend of psychology, stagecraft and charm to gain access to computer systems, and reveals how people can boost their security and make her job more difficult.

Producer: Katy Hickman

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Start the Week

Hacking and cybercrime

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4