Tech Time Warp: Andy Warhol and the Amiga
The format of the Apple product launch is legendary, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the July 23, 1985, launch of the Commodore Amiga 1000. Held at Lincoln Center, with Commodore employees sporting tuxes and the music of a...
Tech Time Warp: Zeus, Ruler of Malware?
The Zeus malware, like its Greek god namesake, is a powerful and virile Trojan malware. Since it first surfaced in July 2007 in an attack on the U.S. Department of Transportation, Zeus, aka Zbot, and its variants have wreaked havoc on the...
Tech Time Warp: 1964 Olympic Games, aka the Technology Olympics
As the world’s eyes turn to Tokyo for the postponed 2020 Olympic Games, delayed to this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s worth also looking back at the 1964 Tokyo Games. Known as the “Technology Olympics,” the 1964 Games...
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”...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...