
Tech Time Warp: Shamoon virus makes its first appearance
On Aug. 15, 2012, someone with high levels of network access at Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s largest oil companies, unleashed a virus that wiped data from more than 30,000 computers. The release of Shamoon is considered one of...

Pioneers in Tech: Mina Rees, a mid-century technology trailblazer
Like so many “pioneers in tech,” Mina Rees did not let much dissuade her from her ultimate goals. Born Aug. 2, 1902, in Cleveland, Ohio, Rees grew up in New York City. After graduating summa cum laude from Hunter College...

Tech Time Warp: The truth about shatter attacks
In this week’s Tech Time Warp, we’re looking back at August 2002, when security researcher Kristin Paget published a whitepaper on the dangers of “shatter attacks,” and Microsoft had more than a few quibbles with it.

Tech Time Warp: Koobface Worms Its Way Through Facebook
For this week’s Tech Time Warp, we’re going back to August 2008—when you were still juggling Facebook and MySpace profiles—unsuspecting social networkers found their machines infected by Koobface, a particularly nasty computer worm. Koobface (an anagram for Facebook) caught its victims...

Tech time warp: ode to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System
News that a gamer has made freely and publicly available a comprehensive collection of Super Nintendo game manuals has opened the door to a wave of ’90s gamer nostalgia. The hundreds of manuals collected by Kerry Hays—known as “Peebs” on...

Pioneers in Tech: Happy birthday to “Killer App” creator Dan Bricklin
Spreadsheet jockeys of the world, be sure to raise a glass this weekend to toast Dan Bricklin, born July 16, 1951, the co-creator of VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program for personal computers.

Tech Time Warp: Where did Carmen Sandiego come from?
The same generation of schoolchildren who traveled the Oregon Trail also crisscrossed the globe in hot pursuit of one international supervillain named Carmen Sandiego. Apple’s early investment in the education market meant schools were filled with Apple IIs and children eager...

Tech Time Warp: The origin of the Oregon Trail
The real Oregon Trail began in Independence, Missouri, but for generations of American schoolchildren, the trail began in a Minneapolis classroom in 1971, when three student teachers combined their penchant for history with their knowledge of BASIC.

Tech Time Warp: Did you forget about the first iPhone?
As ubiquitous as the iPhone is today (and as many competitors as it has inspired), it can be difficult to think back to June 2007, when the first iPhone went on sale. Disrupting the Blackberry world, the iPhone of 2007 was...

Tech Time Warp: The Early Days of IBM
The monolith we know today as IBM got its start June 16, 1911, when the forward-thinking Charles R. Flint merged the International Time Recording Company, Computing Scale Company and the Tabulating Machine Company—all “computing and tabulating enterprises”—into the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company,...