It was only 26 years ago when Y2K was going to lead to massive problems.
Since then, we have tied nearly everything to the internet.
What a surprise that the bad dudes are taking advantage of those internet connections and cause these problems just for the fun of doing so.
And only 31 years since we started working in earnest to make damn sure nothing happened at 00:00:00 on 2000_01_01. And we succeeded. Maybe that was a mistake. Maybe we should have let the world to go to hell ... as a warning that reliance on automated systems can come at too high a price.