Stiction is a portmanteau of “static” and “friction.” In engineering, it’s used to describe the amount of force required to make something move while it’s in contact with another material.  In the data recovery industry, stiction is also used to...

Ransomware groups frequently target organizations — not home users — for an obvious reason: Businesses, non-profits, and government agencies are much more likely to pay. In recent years, we’ve seen massive attacks against healthcare systems, casinos, and even federal government...

From a consumer storage standpoint, hard disk drives (HDDs) aren’t as popular as they used to be. Solid-state drives (SSD) are significantly faster and more capable of performing in a variety of conditions — which is why Microsoft is pushing ...

The FBI has charged a North Korean man for allegedly contributing to a massive information exfiltration campaign against hospitals, U.S. military institutions, and scientific research organizations.  Rim John Kyok is allegedly part of Andariel, a ransomware group that allegedly compromised...

Cybercriminals are moving away from popular ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) platforms thanks to major efforts from law enforcement agencies, per a recent threat assessment published by Europol. RaaS is a business model in which cybercriminals provide ransomware software and infrastructure to...

Recently, we searched for “failing hard drives” to see whether the internet was dispensing bad advice regarding drive failures (and to see if our name came up). Google’s experimental A.I. answered our question — and promptly provided instructions that could...

The Los Angeles County Superior Court is reeling from a major ransomware attack, per an announcement from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.  The attack has impacted the entirety of the Superior Court’s operations, essentially grinding its systems to a halt....

One of the most common computer failure scenarios is also one of the most difficult to diagnose: The computer turns on, but the screen is black (or otherwise not responsive).  The core issue is simple: The monitor isn’t receiving a...

Back in the 1990s, hard drive defragmentation was an essential part of weekly computer maintenance — and for some people, it was the best part. Windows 95 and 98 provides a graphical disk defragmenter with a grid that gradually changed...

Address poisoning, also known as address spoofing, is a type of cryptocurrency attack in which an attacker sends a small amount of worthless tokens to a victim. The attacker’s wallet has an address that resembles a wallet used by a...