Have fond reminiscences of 2021? They in all probability do not embody these 10 tales or the services and products surrounding them.

Picture: Wetzkaz Graphics/Shutterstock
Numerous stuff has occurred up to now 12 months, particularly within the tech world. It appeared like each time you turned your head in 2021 there was a brand new digital catastrophe unfolding: Delicate information was leaked, ransoms took networks offline and plain outdated trend gender discrimination circumstances have all rocked the tech world up to now 12 months.
Positive, there’s been great things, nevertheless it was far simpler to provide you with this one than the previous. Principally, it has been a tough 12 months.
You’ll have missed a few of these objects, nevertheless it’s extra possible you’ve got heard about each. They had been onerous to overlook, even among the many different tales that stored us on edge this previous 12 months.
The Colonial Pipeline assault
When the Colonial Pipeline Firm was compelled to close down its operations as a consequence of a ransomware assault in Could, a great portion of the east coast of the U.S. was left worrying about working out of gas, giving us one among our first actual footage of what it appeared like when the specter of cybercrime spilled over into the bodily world.
The assault was an eye fixed opener that not solely highlighted how harmful ransomware may very well be, but in addition how susceptible important infrastructure was to assault.
To make issues worse, take into consideration how safe infrastructure ought to be, after which take into consideration yours: Are you prepared for an assault like that?
In different ransomware information, it is in all places
Because the Colonial Pipeline assault confirmed us, ransomware is a critical menace to everybody in all places, even those that do not make a lot use of know-how: If it could possibly have an effect on infrastructure, it could possibly have an effect on every little thing.
To make issues worse, ransomware accounted for 69% of all assaults involving malware in Q2 2021, a 30% leap from the identical interval in 2020. We have entered the ransomware age.
Governments, medical and industrial corporations, scientific establishments and academic amenities are on the highest threat of being attacked by ransomware, however they are not the one ones who want to fret.
On a constructive word, ransomware actors appear to love leveraging identified safety vulnerabilities, so conserving your methods up to date ought to go a good distance towards lowering your assault footprint.
Bitcoin units the world on hearth
Yeah, Bitcoin is scorching this 12 months, however that is not what I imply: I am speaking in regards to the huge power and carbon footprint that has bloomed up because the Bitcoin community continues to develop. We have lastly began to concentrate to it in 2021, with Elon Musk calling its power consumption “insane,” and calling into query its usefulness (neither Tesla nor Musk have divested themselves of Bitcoin holdings).
It is true that Bitcoin makes use of an absurd quantity of power, and 2021 was the 12 months that it actually skyrocketed, rising from someplace round a 77 TWh/12 months forecast to start with of the 12 months to greater than 200 TWh/12 months by December 25. At this level, the Bitcoin community is burning via the identical quantity of energy and gas as some medium-sized nations, and a person transaction eats up extra energy than a median U.S. family makes use of in 70 days.
Bitcoin, and different cryptocurrencies, want one thing huge, like a transition to proof-of-stake, if they are going to survive a bigger world transition to greener power.
SEE: Google Chrome: Safety and UI ideas it’s essential know (TechRepublic Premium)
SolarWinds attackers maintain hacking
In late 2020, a bunch of what’s now believed to be Russian state-sponsored hackers broke into authorities methods by exploiting flaws in SolarWinds’ Orion community administration software program. It was a complicated assault that leveraged deep-level vulnerabilities and it left the cybersecurity world scrambling.
The staff behind it did not let up, and is believed to be chargeable for a sequence of phishing assaults towards authorities companies and NGOs in Could, and makes an attempt it made to impersonate cloud service resellers in a bid to achieve entry to buyer IT methods in October.
The group behind the assaults is called Nobelium, and it is simply the most recent in a string of government-sponsored assaults towards IT infrastructure and corporations in international nations. It is unlikely to be the final group both, so proceed to be on guard, particularly in the event you do work in an affected business. It’s possible you’ll not assume it, however your group might function an unnoticed method in for harmful attackers.
The chips are very, very down
It has been a tough couple of years for anybody who manufactures merchandise that make use of semiconductors. Sadly, which means largely everybody within the fashionable world.
The chip scarcity that began because of COVID-19 provide chain interruptions continues on unabated, leaving numerous merchandise disadvantaged of important elements.
The massive downside with the semiconductor business is how inflexible it’s, and must be: Materials prices are excessive, merchandise are made-to-order and sudden interruptions within the provide chain can result in years of delays, as we’re experiencing now.
Predictions as to an ending differ, however count on us to function in some form of scarcity till not less than mid-2023 or early 2024.
Change will get pwned
If there are a number of tales duking it out for the title of worst of the 12 months, the 4 zero-day Microsoft Change server vulnerabilities found in March are undoubtedly a contender.
The quartet of exploits got here to gentle when assaults by a Chinese language state-sponsored actor generally known as Hafnium had been detected focusing on on-premise Change servers with the first goal of exhilarating delicate or in any other case precious information.
Patches for this exploit have been launched, so anybody chargeable for a machine working Change Server 2013, 2016 or 2019 ought to make sure these patches are utilized. For those who do not set up them and get hit you will solely have your self responsible.
NFTs: You are shopping for nothing, however somebody’s gaining
For those who learn my earlier article on the perfect tech of 2021, you may be confused to see NFTs right here, as a result of they’re in there, too.
The idea of the NFT is nice: They’re distinctive tokens that dwell on a blockchain and might be tied to something, which provides them loads of potential purposes. To this point, the one utility to achieve steam has been one more speculative market akin to the one surrounding Bitcoin.
NFTs have largely been used to promote digital art work and different collectible objects by ostensibly naming the NFT the “unique” digital merchandise. Normally, consumers do not get any type of copyright management or copy rights—that often stays with the creator or vendor.
So, what are you shopping for whenever you purchase an NFT? Nothing. How a lot are you spending? Doubtlessly hundreds of thousands. An NFT might rise in worth, or it might end up all of us resolve they’re simply as precious as beanie infants, Troll dolls or Tomagotchi.
SEE: Password breach: Why popular culture and passwords do not combine (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
AWS crashes … and crashes … and crashes
We have come to depend on the cloud in a comparatively brief period of time, and we turned much more depending on it because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is alleged to be secure, however Amazon’s AWS internet hosting service, which accounts for a good portion of the websites on the web, simply stored taking place in December. As of publication, AWS has had three outages in December, bringing enterprise to a halt for its prospects at an extremely essential time.
Digital transformation initiatives compressed from years to weeks as a result of pandemic, and an ever-increasing variety of corporations going cloud native means we’re pushing our infrastructure tougher than ever. AWS, arguably the chief in all issues cloud, is not scoring any factors with its prospects with continued outages. If it does not step up its sport in 2022 others will certainly attempt to take its place.
Fb has had a YEAR
It has been a tough 12 months for Fb, and that is placing it frivolously. 2020 was unhealthy, too, and loads of the general public ire that Fb incurred in 2021 was sewn in an already fertile mattress fertilized with final 12 months’s information privateness scandal.
Do not get me incorrect: Fb’s tough 12 months has been completely of its personal making. The largest story, Fb product supervisor Frances Haugen’s whistleblowing, opened up some deep closets filled with soiled laundry that Mark Zuckerberg would possible somewhat stayed closed.
Haugen got here to the general public armed with a trove of over 1,000 pages of inner paperwork that exposed Fb’s consciousness of the issues it stoked by permitting misinformation to unfold and failing to police content material.
A month later, information stolen from over 1.5 billion Fb customers appeared on the darkish internet. Certainly unrelated to its mounting scandals, Fb determined to rebrand itself to Meta shortly thereafter.
Meta’s new purpose appears to be all about making a digital “metaverse” the place it sees people working and enjoying in a digital world of Fb-based, er… “Meta”-based digital actuality.
It stays to be seen if Fb/Meta has sufficient model capital to reach the face of a lot latest adverse publicity.
We discovered how far we nonetheless must go on equality
It isn’t precisely a secret that the tech business has lengthy had an issue with gender equality. Girls in tech commonly say they’ve skilled sexism first hand, and research have discovered for a while that ladies proceed to make lower than males doing the identical work.
To make issues worse, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit ladies within the tech sector significantly onerous, with many saying it has brought on a regression of gender roles that has set ladies’s development within the business again by a long time.
To wrap all of it up with a not-so-pretty bow was the revelations that got here out of World of Warcraft writer Activision Blizzard that confirmed a pervasive tradition of sexism and gender discrimination, which is placing it frivolously.
There are loads of ways in which the tech business has been made to replicate on itself up to now couple of years, and this difficulty is not any completely different.
Shareholders at the moment are suing Activision Blizzard for financial harm incurred because of withheld info, all whereas 4 Blizzard staff have mounted a lawsuit alleging discrimination and hostility at work. Oh, toss an SEC investigation into the allegations onto the pile, too, and gamers sad over each the corporate state of affairs and what they see as poor storytelling in World of Warcraft leaving in droves.
All the blowback Activision Blizzard is getting appears like the primary instance of a mega company being pushed to dire straits because of the poor habits of its management staff. Those that permit, perpetrate or ignore unhealthy habits at main firms ought to maintain a watchful eye on these proceedings and their consequence.