Presenting the 2021 PWNIE Award Winners

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.