Inside Conti: The Ransomware Gang That Ran Like a Company with Geoff White

What does the world's most prolific cybercrime operation look like from the inside? And why does it operate suspiciously like a mid-sized tech company, complete with HR headaches, salary negotiations, and a distracted boss nobody respects?

Ron Eddings sits down with investigative journalist and author, Geoff White, who has spent over 20 years covering cybercrime for the BBC, Channel 4 News, and Sky News. Geoff has read 47,000 of Conti’s 300,000 leaked internal chats, the gang that dominated the ransomware world in 2021 and 2022, pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in ransoms. From the Moscow movie studio the gang's leader used to launder money years previously, to the Ukraine war leak that brought the whole Conti empire down, this one plays like true crime… because it is.

Geoff makes the case that defenders should think the same way: you're not buying security tools to fend off a hoodie in a basement, you're investing to outcompete a rival business. For anyone trying to integrate a better incident response plan, this episode reframes the whole conversation.

Impactful Moments 00:00 - Introduction 01:45 - The Rewind: Colonial Pipeline and the week the East Coast ran dry 03:50 - How Geoff went from tech news to cybercrime reporting 05:10 - The difference between threat groups, APTs, and crime gangs 07:25 - Inside the Conti leaks: 300,000 messages 08:55 - Meet the gang: Stern, Mango, and Target 13:20 - Stern's origin story: Zeus malware, money mules, and the 25th Floor front company 16:50 - Ransomware gangs vs. the mafia: where's the protection? 18:10 - The money: $2.5M single payouts and 400 years of wages 19:30 - The Conti member arrested on a layover in Miami 20:35 - The downfall: the Ukraine war and the leak that ended it all 23:05 - What businesses can learn from Conti: recruitment, retention, reputation 27:45 - Advice for defenders: response waves, segmentation, and negotiating down 31:05 - Ron's takeaway: belonging and the thin line between operator and criminal

Links

Connect with Geoff White on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffwhitetech/

Get your own copy of Geoff's books (Crime Dot Com, The Lazarus Heist, Rinsed): https://geoffwhite.tech/book/

Want more information on Conti? Check out Geoff’s BBC podcast series, Cyber Hack: The Conti Files, available on BBC Sounds, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts

–

Check out our upcoming events: https://www.hackervalley.com/livestreams

Love Hacker Valley Studio? Pick up some swag: https://store.hackervalley.com

Become a sponsor of the show: https://hackervalley.com/work-with-us/