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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\u2019s title derives from the exploits of \u2018Fancy Bear\u2019, 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image of the underground hacker as an anti-authoritarian \u2018lone wolf\u2019 who possesses technological wizardry is outdated. Hacking has become industrialised with criminals able to buy \u2018off-the-shelf\u2019 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\u2019s 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