Nathan Wasson
Nathan grew up with computer hardware news and reviews in the family business and eventually joined the business himself in 2014. He initially joined to make video reviews and help with the podcast, but was soon asked if he would write, and he's been writing about computers ever since. More recently, Nathan has developed a passion for internet privacy, security, and decentralization and likes writing about those topics the most. He spends much of his free time tinkering with Linux distributions, custom Android ROMs, privacy and security tools, and self-hosting solutions. He also started gaming on a PC at a young age and still can't give up Unreal Tournament 2004 and Supreme Commander 2. Beyond computers, Nathan is a car enthusiast and philosophy nerd.
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
News broke on February 25th that NVIDIA had been hit by a cyber-attack. The LAPSUS$ ransomware gang took responsibility for the attack the next day, but also claimed that NVIDIA hit them back with its own ransomware. However, NVIDIA’s counterstrike seems not to have disabled LAPSUS$ access to the data it stole nor has...
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Shortly after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, Elon Musk activated Starlink's Internet service in the country, in response to the Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister’s plea for assistance. Two days later, Musk also supplied Ukraine with a shipment of Starlink terminals, earning the Vice Prime Minister’s personal...
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While Microsoft already released Windows 11 back in October and has since been rolling it out to eligible devices, the “Windows as a service” model means that, like Windows 10, Windows 11 will continue to receive relatively frequent updates with substantial changes and new features. These updates first appear in...
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Over the past week, Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation, has been corresponding with tech companies, calling for them to halt operations in Russia and provide aid to Ukraine. Elon Musk responded directly to Fedorov on Twitter, announcing that Starlink internet...
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The United States and other countries are imposing harsh sanctions on Russia, in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Some of these sanctions target Putin specifically, as well as other Russian and Belarusian politicians and oligarchs. Amidst these sanctions, the Ukrainian vice prime minister has called for...
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Earlier this month, we reported on a security flaw in Apple iOS devices and Macs, but now it’s Samsung’s turn. Tel-Aviv University researchers have published a paper detailing a major security flaw in Samsung Galaxy phones going back to the Galaxy S9. The researchers estimate that Samsung shipped roughly 100 million...
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Earlier today, we reported on a circumstance in which NVMe SSDs can lose your data, which is a bad situation when you need to preserve said data. However, it turns out that both Windows 11 and 10 have the opposite problem. Sometimes you do want your data to disappear, as when wiping a device clean, but it appears...
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Last week, we covered warnings issued by two U.S. state attorneys general alerting citizens to the potential stalking threat posed by Apple AirTags. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro stated that “In the wrong hands, these tracking devices could lead to disaster.” These warnings came a week after Apple...
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Microsoft first unveiled Windows 11 in June of last year, but the announcement was quickly met with criticism in response to some of the operating system's strict requirements. The requirements make Trusted Platform Module (TPM) version 2.0 mandatory even though Microsoft didn’t publish its reference implementation...
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Steam has a reputation for running sales with games listed at heavily discounted prices. The Steam Lunar New Year, Winter, Autumn, and Summer sales are particularly notable for high discounts across a very large selection of titles, but sales smaller in scope take place all year round, including individual sales put...
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Since their release, we have been covering the privacy and safety concerns surrounding Apple AirTags. AirTags are cheap and easy-to-use tracking devices that make use of Apple’s billion device Find My network. AirTags are intended to be used for keeping track of and recovering personal belongings, but concerns have...
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A number of cybersecurity experts and teams have recently released reports going over cybersecurity data from 2021 and detailing the growing ransomware threat. We covered a report revealing which industries and countries were hit the most by ransomware, as well as a report that ransomware attacks doubled in...
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Back in 2009, Google published the source code for Chromium OS, the open-source operating system project that underlies Chrome OS. However, while Chromium OS has remained open source, Google has never released a compiled build of the operating system ready for installation. The company has instead focused on releasing...
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Since it’s meteoric rise in early 2020, Zoom has repeatedly come under fire, whether for playing fast and loose with the definition of end-to-end encryption, sharing user data with Facebook undisclosed, installing a hidden web server on customers’ Macs, publishing then back-tracking a claim of 300 million daily active...
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Apple’s AirTag tracking device has garnered a bit of negative attention since its release as privacy and safety concerns have arisen. The device is intended to be attached to personal belongings that are liable to be lost, so that their rightful owners may find them again. Apple claims that it has received written...
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HP, which maintains a threat analyst team, has released a post on its threat research blog detailing a tricky new malware campaign. Only a day after Microsoft announced that Windows 11 was entering its final phase of availability, becoming available for broad deployment on eligible devices, HP discovered that someone...
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ExpressVPN runs a bug bounty program through Bugcrowd for the purpose of improving security across the VPN company’s services and websites. The program has already had 22 successful bounty claimants, but ExpressVPN is now sweetening the pot in order to attract more white hat hackers.
ExpressVPN’s bounty program has...
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Back in May of last year, we reported on a new campaign by Google to increase user account security through a number of methods. As part of this campaign, Google announced its plans to drive people to use two-factor authentication (2FA), saying that users whose accounts are appropriately configured would begin to be...
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We reported a week ago on a security vulnerability in Windows that multiple publicly available exploits can leverage to gain elevated privileges. We advised readers to apply the patch for this vulnerability as soon as possible, and now the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is ordering federal...
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Last week, we wrote about a report that Microsoft recently ditched its plans for the device that would have launched as the HoloLens 3, according to three insiders. However, the claim of these insiders goes against Microsoft’s official messaging regarding HoloLens.
Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s spokesperson, without...
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A cybersecurity firm just recently discovered a search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning campaign intended to dupe users into installing malware on their computers. The campaign works by leveraging various SEO techniques, such as cramming tons of keywords into the source code of various malicious webpages, in order...
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In the age of Windows 95, Microsoft introduced PowerToys, a set of tools for Windows power users to tweak to their heart's content. Among these tools was TweakUI, which exposed system utility settings that were previously accessible only by modifying the Windows Registry. However, after Windows XP, PowerToys went the...
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