Kate Johanns

All posts by Kate Johanns

Kate Johanns is a communications professional and freelance writer with more than 13 years of experience in publishing and marketing.

Tech Time Warp: Sneaky SirCam worm slithers through inboxes

Tech Time Warp: Sneaky SirCam worm slithers through inboxes

When it comes to use of social engineering in malware, the SirCam worm must be among the most insidious. The worm propagated itself in the usual way via email attachment. But SirCam didn’t carry a new email attachment—the typical “invoice”...

/ July 16, 2021
Pioneers in Tech: Margaret Hamilton’s moonshot

Pioneers in Tech: Margaret Hamilton’s moonshot

NASA estimates 400,000 individuals contributed to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s ability to land on the moon on July 20, 1969. One of them was Margaret Hamilton, a 32-year-old software engineer working at MIT. Hamilton developed the software system that...

/ July 9, 2021
Tech Time Warp: The Speak & Spell, far more than a toy

Tech Time Warp: The Speak & Spell, far more than a toy

Readers of a certain age will recall the Speak & Spell, a Texas Instruments toy that would impress no child of today, but has earned its rightful place in history as the first consumer product to use digital signal processing...

/ July 2, 2021
Tech Time Warp
Tech Time Warp: The Pikachu virus is not your friend

Tech Time Warp: The Pikachu virus is not your friend

It sounds so innocent: An email appears in your inbox, subject line “Pikachu Pokemon.” The message speaks of friendship and invites you to visit Pikachu on his website. And the attachment (warning bells going off yet?) features an animation of...

/ June 25, 2021
Tech Time Warp: Stuxnet takes malware to the next level

Tech Time Warp: Stuxnet takes malware to the next level

Today’s action movies and thrillers routinely feature some hacker-type who—armed with a laptop in a chunky military-grade case—can infiltrate the most impenetrable of digital fortresses in a few furious keystrokes. But in the real-life case of Stuxnet, first detected in...

/ June 18, 2021 / 8 Comments
Pioneers in Tech: Remembering the life of Alan Turing

Pioneers in Tech: Remembering the life of Alan Turing

The life of Alan Turing —the man who broke the Nazi Enigma code in World War II, providing the intelligence that led the Allies to victory—is one of many wrenching stories to be remembered during Pride Month, the annual remembrance...

/ June 11, 2021
Tech Time Warp: ExploreZip worm cleans out Microsoft Office files

Tech Time Warp: ExploreZip worm cleans out Microsoft Office files

Just a few months after the Melissa virus attacked computers, wreaking an estimated $80 million in damage, the ExploreZip worm began zipping through computers across the globe, destroying any Microsoft Office files in its path. First detected in June 1999,...

/ June 4, 2021
Tech Time Warp: A short history of the GIF that keeps on giving

Tech Time Warp: A short history of the GIF that keeps on giving

We may be entering some sort of post-GIF age, given that Gen Z has declared GIF reactions “cheugy” along with skinny jeans, side parts and laugh emojis. But millennial influencers, Gen X Slack-ers (pun intended), and even Baby Boomers have...

/ May 28, 2021
Tech Time Warp: Looking back at the evolution of ransomware

Tech Time Warp: Looking back at the evolution of ransomware

The havoc wreaked by the recent Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack—which caused a gas shortage in the southeastern United States and cost the company a reported $850,000 to resolve—highlights the immense risk ransomware poses to companies and national security.

/ May 21, 2021
Pioneers in Tech: Mary Allen Wilkes, first to WFH with a computer

Pioneers in Tech: Mary Allen Wilkes, first to WFH with a computer

Remote work has long been common in the tech industry, even pre-coronavirus, but it had to start somewhere. After all, you couldn’t exactly squeeze an ENIAC in the spare bedroom. That’s why the story of Mary Allen Wilkes remains relevant...

/ May 14, 2021