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...

Block erase (also referred to as “secure erase” and by other names, depending on the implementation) is an ATA command that tells the SSD’s controller to apply an erase voltage. The voltage is applied to all NAND cells of the...

Patelco Credit Union, a Sacramento-based credit union with 37 local branches, has confirmed that its recent security breach occurred due to a ransomware attack.  In an email sent to the members of the credit union, Patelco CEO Erin Mendez said...

We’re approaching the 70th anniversary of the hard disk drive (and despite a  popular misconception, hard drive sales are still going strong). Without HDDs, modern computing wouldn’t be possible, and when the IBM 350 was introduced in 1956, it jump-started...

The Lockbit 3.0 ransomware group claims to have breached the United States Federal Reserve, exfiltrating about 33 terabytes of potentially sensitive data.  The group claims that the stolen data includes “Americans’ banking secrets,” though they have not yet published any...

A ransomware attack targeting Synnovis, a U.K. healthcare partnership, has significantly disrupted medical procedures in several of London’s largest hospitals.  The incident has prevented hospitals from matching patients’ blood types at a normal frequency. Surgeries and other procedures that require...