security Archives - The Silicon Underground

The Melissa virus of 1999

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:00:08 +0000

The Melissa virus was a mass-mailing macro virus from March 1999. It was one of the more notorious computer viruses of the 1990s, and reportedly the author named it for a dancer he met in a Florida nightclub. Authorities quickly

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Remembering the Michelangelo virus

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:00:08 +0000

Remember the Michelangelo virus? If you don’t remember, on March 6, 1992, Michelangelo was programmed to overwrite the first 100 sectors of a hard drive–not quite as destructive as formatting a drive, but to the average user, the effect is

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Year 2038 problem

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 12:00:30 +0000

We need to talk about the year 2038 problem. The year 2038 problem exists on Unix and Unix-like systems, and other software that borrowed the Unix time standard. The problem is that on January 19, 2038, the 32 bit integer

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The Egghead breach of 2000

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 12:00:26 +0000

It was 25 years ago, December 22, 2000, that Egghead’s website, egghead.com, was hacked, exposing 3 and 1/2 million credit card numbers. This incident raised a question we’ve been asking ever since. How do we know that our payment information

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Why Intel acquired McAfee, then un-bought it

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 11:00:38 +0000

On August 19, 2010, CPU manufacturer Intel purchased antivirus maker McAfee. At the time, few people knew why. And let’s just say fewer people were surprised when Intel unacquired McAfee in April 2017 than they were when they made the

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Code Red worm, July 13, 2001

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:00:49 +0000

Code Red was a computer worm that exploited one of the earliest notorious Microsoft vulnerabilities, a buffer overflow in Microsoft IIS. It is credited as the first large scale mixed threat attack against enterprise networks. Code red was released July

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Why the Wannacry outbreak was so bad

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 12 May 2025 11:00:06 +0000

On May 12, 2017, ransomware named Wannacry started spreading across the globe, infecting and encrypting Windows systems by exploiting CVE-2017-0144, a flaw that a two-month-old Microsoft patch, MS17-010, had fixed. It quickly became one of the biggest Windows outbreaks ever.

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Troubleshooting long scan times in Tenable Security Center

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 15:37:12 +0000

I can never find this when I need it, so I am going to write up how I troubleshoot long scan times in Tenable Security Center. And if it helps you too, so be it. Usually when a Security Center

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Why we call software updates patches

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 11:00:28 +0000

It’s Patch Tuesday, the day Microsoft and Adobe grace us with new software updates to track, argue about, and maybe someday deploy to our computer systems. But have you ever wondered why we call software updates “patches?” What’s the meaning

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Should you use a face scan, fingerprint, or passkey?

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 12:00:14 +0000

What’s better, biometrics like a fingerprint or face recognition, a pass key, or old fashioned passwords? A couple of different conversations I had recently spurred this question, and I think it’s worth exploring. Biometrics: Face scan, fingerprints, or retina scans

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