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
Tech Time Warp: Worm named Code Red wakes users up to security risks

Tech Time Warp: Worm named Code Red wakes users up to security risks

In this week’s tech time warp we look at how, following a month of DDoS attacks and security bulletins—including an attack on whitehouse.gov—computer users were on high alert Aug. 1, 2001, as they waited to see whether the Code Red...

/ August 4, 2023
Tech Time Warp
Tech Time Warp: Barbie’s complicated relationship with STEM

Tech Time Warp: Barbie’s complicated relationship with STEM

In this week’s tech time warp, we’re taking a look at Barbie—yes, the iconic doll turned blockbuster movie heroine. She has had a complicated relationship with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) would be an understatement. Teen Talk Barbie, released...

/ July 28, 2023
tech time warp
Tech Time Warp: How human error leads to July 1997 email outage

Tech Time Warp: How human error leads to July 1997 email outage

This week’s Tech Time Warp looks at how, in a world that’s so utterly reliant on the internet, service outages are hardly uncommon anymore, whether they’re the result of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, like that which caused Microsoft...

/ July 21, 2023
Pioneers in Tech: Joan L. Mitchell, co-inventor of the JPEG

Pioneers in Tech: Joan L. Mitchell, co-inventor of the JPEG

This week’s Pioneers in Tech looks at how today’s social media influencers owe much to Joan L. Mitchell, a self-professed “Sputnik baby” who came of age during the space race and ended up co-creating one of the file formats most...

/ July 14, 2023
Tech Time Warp
Tech Time Warp: Tron captivates audiences with 15 minutes of CGI

Tech Time Warp: Tron captivates audiences with 15 minutes of CGI

As with all things technological, it’s easy to take computer-generated imagery, or CGI, for granted—or even complain about CGI, in the case of the much-maligned CGI Flounder from Disney’s recent remake of The Little Mermaid. But in this week’s Tech...

/ July 7, 2023
Tech Time Warp
Tech Time Warp: Malware in the “Form” of a boot sector virus

Tech Time Warp: Malware in the “Form” of a boot sector virus

Although this week’s Tech Time Warp topic is not as prevalent today, boot sector viruses were a widespread issue in the 1990s and 2000s. Especially common during the days of MS-DOS and floppy disks, a boot sector virus attacks a...

/ June 30, 2023
Tech Time Warp
Tech Time Warp: 80s viruses that hit the Apple II

Tech Time Warp: 80s viruses that hit the Apple II

Apple products have a reputation for being immune to malware, but that is not 100 percent true. In 1988, hackers released two viruses targeting ProDOS, the Apple II operating system. Admittedly, it took hackers five years to attack ProDOS —...

/ June 23, 2023
Tech Time Warp: Morto worm relishes on common usernames and weak passwords

Tech Time Warp: Morto worm relishes on common usernames and weak passwords

Before you read any more of this post, ask yourself: Are you using “administrator” as a username for any service? If the answer is yes, stop what you’re doing and change that immediately. Then return here to find out why....

/ June 16, 2023
Pioneers in Tech: LGBTQ+ activist Edith Windsor’s first career

Pioneers in Tech: LGBTQ+ activist Edith Windsor’s first career

The late Edith Windsor is best known as the plaintiff in the 2013 Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor, which struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and helped paved the way for the legalization of same-sex...

/ June 9, 2023
Mobile Malware Telefonica
Tech Time Warp: Making nothing of mobile malware

Tech Time Warp: Making nothing of mobile malware

An early case of mobile malware provoked an interesting reaction from pundits: swift dismissal as much ado about nothing. In June 2000, users of mobile phones made by the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica began receiving strange text messages. The messages...

/ June 2, 2023