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The NSA’s disaster aversion by keeping BIOSes safe for the free world

Dave Farquhar security December 19, 2013November 30, 20181990s, amd, antivirus, apple, CIH, intel, MELTDOWN, NSA, random data

This weekend, CBS ran a story about how the NSA foiled a sinister plot to brick millions of PCs and cause a financial meltdown. At least they didn’t say MELTDOWN.

My opinion is that this is a puff piece. A source managed to scare a journalist with a threat that sounded credible enough, and make something routine sound big and threatening.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.

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Cleaning a hard drive with Linux

Dave Farquhar security November 19, 2013December 3, 2015dell, random data

A friend asked me a favor in church one Sunday: He had a computer he wanted to clean off so he could donate it, but since it had financial data on it, he wanted to make sure it was cleaned up securely. I recommended Darik’s Boot and Nuke, which I’ve recommended before, but he wasn’t able to get it working for whatever reason. So he asked if I would clean it if he dropped it off. I agreed.

Rather than burn a DBAN disc, I just took the hard drive out and put it in a Linux box and wiped it with that. It was easier than trying to find a blank CD.

Dave Farquhar

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How to give a computer or hard drive away more securely

Dave Farquhar security June 29, 2012Disk Cleanup, random data, Windows Explorer

If you want to give away a computer, it’s best to securely erase the hard drive first in order to prevent someone from recovering sensitive data from it after it leaves your hands.

The problem with this advice is the lack of a comfortable, familiar way to do it.

But I found one. It’s called Privazer.
Read more

Dave Farquhar

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The 15-second rule and other (non) myths

Dave Farquhar Hardware December 21, 2010October 17, 20171980s, commodore, IBM, power button, random data, video memory

Cnet investigated some computer wise tales, myths, conventional wisdom, or whatever else you want to call it. The one I take the most issue with is the 15-second rule. They asked Geek Squad, and, as a long, long-ago Best Buy employee, the answer they gave to the 15-second rule is, well, what I would expect. Read more

Dave Farquhar

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