Death, torture, and amputation: How cybercrime shook the world in 2025

The knock-on, and often unintentional, impacts of a cyberattack are so rarely discussed. As an industry, the focus is almost always placed on the economic damage: the ransom payment; the cost of business downtime; and goodness, don't forget those poor shareholders.

But, in recent years, the toll on human life has become increasingly apparent. 

We know the poor sods working in the security operations center give up their weekends every time a phish slips through the net, and we know how hard corporate spin doctors have to work on controlling post-attack narratives. However, there is a sense that the real harms affecting real people, most of whom don't realize how their lives could change because of a cybercriminal's thirst for chaos, or cash, are increasingly central to the telling of a modern cybercrime story.

Attacks over the past year were not the first to affect human life ...