{"id":42690,"date":"2021-12-16T16:26:46","date_gmt":"2021-12-16T16:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=46506092165589dfa9a1d74fd308236c"},"modified":"2021-12-16T16:26:46","modified_gmt":"2021-12-16T16:26:46","slug":"the-most-spectacular-tech-gaffes-of-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/the-most-spectacular-tech-gaffes-of-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"The most spectacular tech gaffes of 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Carly Page<\/a><\/span>
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30 Dec, 2021<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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No year passes without incident, and that\u2019s especially true for a 12-month period equally blighted with COVID-19<\/a> as it was with tech-related mishaps and mix-ups.<\/p>\n

From public sector IT blunders to catastrophic cyber security failings, here\u2019s our pick of the most eye-catching and alarming incidents to grace the headlines.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Government-funded laptops arrive in schools loaded with malware<\/h2>\n
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The UK government welcomed us into 2021 with a major IT blunder that saw it issue malware-infested laptops to vulnerable children<\/a>. A number of these devices were found to be infected with a “self-propagating network worm”, and also appeared to be communicating with Russian servers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Windows-based laptops were, specifically, infected with Gamarue.1, a worm Microsoft first identified in 2012. At the time, the Department of Education said it was \u201curgently investigating\u201d the issue that had only affected a \u201csmall number of devices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slack kickstarts 2021 with a major outage\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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Slack<\/a>, meanwhile, also started 2021 on the wrong footing, with the now Salesforce-owned<\/a> business communications platform suffering a major outage on 4 January as employees across the globe began to log back onto their systems to start their working year afresh.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The outage saw team members unable to reliably send or receive messages, with some users also struggling to log into the service altogether.<\/p>\n

Home Office wipes 15,000 police records<\/h2>\n
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Back in February, the Home Office was forced to admit it had inadvertently deleted the records of more than 15,000 people from the Police National Computer (PNC<\/span>).\u00a0<\/p>\n

A total of 209,550 offence records that related to 112,697 individuals were wiped from the system, including crucial evidence such as fingerprint scans, DNA<\/a> and arrest records. This “critical incident” was later blamed<\/a> on a combination of “human error” and failures at the management level.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SolarWinds blames intern for weak \u2018solarwinds123\u2019 password<\/h2>\n
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Following the devastating supply-chain attack towards the tail end of 2020, SolarWinds<\/span> admitted<\/a> a former intern had leaked a weak company password that was publicly accessible on the internet<\/span> for more than a year.\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The password \u2018solarwinds123\u2019 \u2013 a critical lapse in password security<\/a> \u2013 was publicly accessible through a private GitHub<\/span> repository from June 2018, before this was finally addressed in November 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SolarWinds<\/span> failed to mention, however, whether the password played a role in the major cyber attack the company sustained. This incident saw up to 18,000 businesses compromised by a version of its Orion security platform loaded with malware. The incident, nevertheless, serves as a reminder for businesses to stay on top of information security as we transition on into a more dangerous than ever 2022. <\/span><\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s Channel Nine interrupted by cyber attack<\/h2>\n
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In March this\u00a0year, an unknown assailant took down a live broadcast by Australia’s Channel Nine TV station<\/a>. This ransomware attack locked staff out of emails, internet<\/span> access and print production systems.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s happening? Well not much right now! Tech issues \u2066@Channel9<\/a>\u2069 this morning… pic.twitter.com\/yvHBbxdbGC<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Richard Wilkins (@RichardWilkins) March 27, 2021<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n