2021 Worst Hacks

While 2020 saw a number of significant instances of lockdown hacking, experts say that 2021 was the year of digital reckoning.
"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." John Scott-Railton, University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, via 'Wired'. Here are the most significant hacks of 2021, in no particular order.
1. Colonial Pipeline. The hack led to long gas lines across the Southeast U.S. The company paid nearly $4 million in bitcoin to resolve the ransomware attack.
2. Twitch: Hackers stole and then released 128 GB worth of personal user data, including information related to parent company Amazon.
3. Kaseya: The U.S. Justice Dept. arrested one person involved in this supply chain hack that created havoc over the summer.
4. Microsoft Exchange Hacking: A hacker group in China went on a spree lasting several months that infiltrated governments and small businesses across the U.S. and E.U.
5. JBS USA: This global meat processing company experienced a ransomware attack in March that led to plant shutdowns and livestock returns.
6. NSO Group Tools Hacks: This Israeli company's tools were credited with large scale attacks on popular apps including WhatsApp and iMessage.
7. Accellion: This firewall vendor's system updates were too slow for hackers, who attacked financial systems, grocery store chains and even American universities