Ctrl+ Alt+ Chaos: How teenage hackers hijack the internet Joe Tidy
Event details
Cyber correspondent Joe Tidy has investigated and interviewed the most infamous teenage hacker gangs of the past decade for the BBC and previously for Sky News.
Join Joe, author of Ctrl+ Alt+ Chaos, as he unveils the dark digital underbelly where teenage boys are reshaping cybersecurity, cryptocurrency and organised crime under the noses of their parents. Learn about the life of Julius Kivimaki, aka Zeekill, arguably the most hated hacker in history, from 12-year-old nuisance hacker to a Most Wanted cybercriminal culminating in his 2023 capture. In one of the cruellest hacks in history, he blackmailed 30,000 Finnish psychotherapy patients with their stolen notes. Kivimaki’s story gives us vital insights into how hackers find their feet and become dangerous criminals.
Joe will track the rise and fall of groups such as LulzSec, HTP, UG Nazi, and Lizard Squad, Jow, and discuss his exclusive interviews with the hackers as well as the police officers trying to stop them. He will also draw parallels with recent high-profile attacks from other teenage gangs and ask the question – how can we stop the cycle of teenage boys hijacking life online?
This event will take place live on Zoom Webinar. You will receive a link to join a couple of days before the event and a reminder an hour before. During the event, you can ask questions via a Q&A function, but audience cameras and microphones will remain muted throughout.
Book sales
You can buy copies of many of our speakers’ books from Fox Lane Books, a local independent bookseller and Festival partner. In some cases, author signed bookplates are available too.
About the speaker
Joe Tidy is the BBC’s first ever Cyber Correspondent and the foremost voice in the corporation on cybercrime and hacking. Over the past six years he has covered all major cyber-attacks for BBC TV, Radio, social media and website. He has made documentaries about cyber security travelling to the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Germany and Ukraine to track down stories and characters. Joe’s most high-profile news feature and documentary saw him travel to Russia in November 2021 in search of the world’s most wanted cyber-criminal. This hunt was read by 1 million people, viewed across social media more than 2.4 million times and translated into 30 different languages across the BBC network. His top six BBC News documentaries have garnered more than 7 million views including 2.2 million for The Teenage Millionaire Hacker and 1.4 million for The Russian Hackers – and he has recently hosted the popular Cyber Hack series in the feature Evil Corp. Before joining the BBC, he was a correspondent at Sky News where he regularly reported on technology and began his decade-long obsession with cybercrime after reporting on the infamous 2014 Christmas day Lizard Squad attack.
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