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The list of 2021 PWNIE Award winners includes security researchers behind some of the biggest vulnerabilities discoveries over the past year.

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The annual PWNIE Awards at Black Hat recognize security researchers, vendors, and others — including media outlets — that had some kind of impact on the cybersecurity industry over the previous 12 months.

Past awards have been awarded as a tribute from the community to those who made a meaningful contribution to make things better in the industry, but have also been used to rebuke those who had the opposite effect because of their security failures. The 2021 PWNIEs call out organizations that could have done more to address security issues, and also includes researchers whose bug discoveries and exploits made the news during the year or whose work opened fresh insights into vulnerability research and attack techniques. For the second year running, the awards recognized research that did not receive as much attention as it should have.

The following lists PWNIE Award winners for 2021 across nine categories. The tenth category, for Best Song, is not included on this list, but here’s The Ransomware Song for those who want to listen along as they peruse the winners.

About the Author(s)

Jai Vijayan, Contributing Writer

Jai Vijayan is a seasoned technology reporter with over 20 years of experience in IT trade journalism. He was most recently a Senior Editor at Computerworld, where he covered information security and data privacy issues for the publication. Over the course of his 20-year career at Computerworld, Jai also covered a variety of other technology topics, including big data, Hadoop, Internet of Things, e-voting, and data analytics. Prior to Computerworld, Jai covered technology issues for The Economic Times in Bangalore, India. Jai has a Master's degree in Statistics and lives in Naperville, Ill.

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