The Worst Hacks of 2021

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IF 2020 WAS the year of pandemic lockdown hacking, 2021 was open season for attackers around the world. Ransomware gangs were shockingly aggressive, targeting health care facilities, schools, and critical infrastructure at an alarming rate. And hackers continued to launch supply chain attacks with extensive fallout. With the pandemic still raging in the background, system administrators, incident responders, global law enforcement, and security practitioners of all sorts worked tirelessly to counter the barrage. And governments scrambled to take more concrete action against online threats. 

For now, though, the seemingly endless cat-and-mouse game continues. As John Scott-Railton, senior researcher at University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, puts it, “2021 is the year where we’re realizing that the problems we chose not to solve years or decades ago are one by one coming back to haunt us.”

Here's WIRED's retrospective on the year's worst breaches, leaks, data exposures, ransomware attacks, state-sponsored hacking campaigns, and digital mayhem. With no sign of a reprieve in 2022, watch your back and stay safe out there.

Read the full article by Lily Hay Newman on the Wired blog.