The first six months of 2017 have seen an inordinate number of cybersecurity meltdowns. And they weren't just your standard corporate breaches. It's only July, and already there's been viral, state-sponsored ransomware, leaks of spy tools from US intelligence agencies, and full-on campaign hacking. And that's just the beginning.

Let this recap of 2017's biggest cyber-incidents so far serve as a reminder of just how chaotic things have already gotten–and the year's only halfway done.

The mysterious hacking group known as the Shadow Brokers first surfaced in August 2016, claiming to have breached the spy tools of the elite NSA-linked operation known as the Equation Group. The Shadow Brokers offered a sample of alleged stolen NSA data and attempted to auction off a bigger trove, following up with leaks for Halloween and Black Friday in 2016.

This April, though, marked the group's most impactful release yet. It included a trove of particularly significant alleged NSA tools, including a Windows exploit known as EternalBlue, which hackers have since used to infect targets in two high-profile ransomware attacks (see below).

The identity of the Shadow Brokers is still unknown, but the group's leaks have revived debates about the danger of using bugs in commercial products for intelligence-gathering. Agencies keep these flaws to themselves, instead of notifying the company that makes the software so the vendor can patch the vulnerabilities and protect its customers. If these tools get out, they potentially endanger billions of software users.

On May 12 a strain of ransomware called WannaCry spread around the world, walloping hundreds of thousands of targets, including public utilities and large corporations. Notably, the ransomware temporarily crippled National Health Service hospitals and facilities in the United Kingdom, hobbling emergency rooms, delaying vital medical procedures, and creating chaos for many British patients.

Though powerful, the ransomware also had significant flaws, including a mechanism that security experts effectively used as a kill switch to render the malware inert and stem its spread. US officials later concluded with "moderate confidence" that the ransomware was a North Korean government project gone awry that had been intended to raise revenue while wreaking havoc. In total, WannaCry netted almost 52 bitcoins, or about $130,000—not much for such viral ransomware.

WannaCry's reach came in part thanks to one of the leaked Shadow Brokers Windows vulnerabilities, EternalBlue. Microsoft had released the MS17-010 patch for the bug in March, but many institutions hadn't applied it and were therefore vulnerable to WannaCry infection.

Petya/NotPetya/Nyetya/Goldeneye

A month or so after WannaCry, another wave of ransomware infections that partially leveraged Shadow Brokers Windows exploits hit targets worldwide. This malware, called Petya, NotPetya and a few other names, was more advanced than WannaCry in many ways, but still had some flaws, like an ineffective and inefficient payment system.

Though it infected networks in multiple countries—like the US pharmaceutical company Merck, Danish shipping company Maersk, and Russian oil giant Rosnoft—researchers suspect that the ransomware actually masked a targeted cyberattack against Ukraine. The ransomware hit Ukrainian infrastructure particularly hard, disrupting utilities like power companies, airports, public transit, and the central bank, just the latest in a series of cyber assaults against the country.

A display panel with an error can be seen at the main railway station in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 13 May 2017. A world-wide cyber attack broke down ten thousands of computers of companies, institutions and users. In Germany it was the German railways that were targeted. Boris Roessler/AP

On March 7, WikiLeaks published a data trove containing 8,761 documents allegedly stolen from the CIA that contained extensive documentation of alleged spying operations and hacking tools. Revelations included iOS and Android vulnerabilities, bugs in Windows, and the ability to turn some smart TVs into listening devices.