The teenage hackers bringing British industry to its knees
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The cyberattack which shut down Jaguar Land Rover for five weeks this summer, cost Britain nearly £2bn. It was just one of a series of attacks on big British businesses by teenage hackers who co-ordinate via the dark web. So who are they and how do we stop them?
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Guests:
- Matilda Davies, data journalist at The Times and The Sunday Times and
- Chris Stokel Walker, technology journalist.
Host: Manveen Rana.
Producer: Shabnam Grewal.
Read more: Who are the hackers behind the Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack? , Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack nears £2bn in UK’s costliest hack
Clips: BBC News, 5 News, ITV News, TALK TV, CHANNEL 4 News.
Photo: Getty Images.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 0:05.8 | I'm Manvina. |
| 0:11.8 | All year, it's been the threat haunting British industry. |
| 0:19.6 | Secret agents from the GCHQ department tasked with stopping ransomware attack, so they're dealing |
| 0:25.5 | with at least one incident every day. |
| 0:28.5 | Millions of people's data stolen. |
| 0:30.7 | They've done co-op, harrods and MNS. |
| 0:33.8 | Jaguar Land Rover. |
| 0:34.8 | A suspected cyber attack has caused delays and cancellations at London's Heathrow. |
| 0:42.1 | Hackers have targeted some of the most iconic brands in Britain, causing disruption that's dragged on for months. |
| 0:50.3 | And we now have a sense of just how much it's costing the economy. |
| 0:55.1 | The cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover is estimated to have been the most economically damaging |
| 1:01.1 | hack in UK history and cost the country around £1.9 billion. |
| 1:10.8 | Who are the people behind these cyber attacks? |
| 1:14.4 | Why are there so many happening now? |
| 1:17.1 | And what can the police do to stop them? |
| 1:21.6 | The story today, the teenagers bringing British industry to its knees. |
| 1:42.2 | When Jaguar Land Rover got hacked, to me it's just such an iconic British brand that that kind of sparked it. |
| 1:45.0 | I knew I had to go and dig around and see what I could find about these people. |
| 1:49.8 | That's Matilda Davies, data journalist at the Times and the Sunday Times. |
| 1:54.5 | Law enforcement agencies around the world have really been working together to try and figure out who these hackers are and bring them to justice. |
| 1:58.7 | So as part of that, the National Crime Agency in the UK has been hunting down some of the UK-based hackers. |
... |
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