The Computer Dudes, Inc

Ransomware has become an annoying problem here in Florida and the Southeastern United States.   Many small companies and government agencies are not prepared and have no defense against the attacks.   They also have no money to get new computers or repair the security problems that let the Ransomware in.   

Maybe there is another solution:  Break the Encryption with powerful minicomputers like the new Raspberry Pi 4 or clusters of them.  

That is one of the projects we are working on here at Computer Dudes this week.   We are clustering 4 of the new Raspberry Pi 4's that have 4 Gb of DDR4 memory.

Below are some of the things we are looking at in addition to Decryption Projects as well as how we plan to setup the cluster for maximum efficiency. 

1) Already making mods to the original configuration. We found a Windows Utility that will Format an SDCard in FAT 32 up to 2 Tb. (far past the Microsoft limitation of 32Gb)  We used the fastest Camera Grade SDCards we could find with 64 Gb each.so a 4 Pi cluster has 256 Gb of Solid State Camera Grade SDCards as its primary Hard Drive.

2)  But, as fast as those SDCards are they are snails compaired to the speed of the 4 Gb of DDR4 RAM memory.  So we will have to use some of the DDR4 memory as a RAMDisk. Its gonna be sick how fast it is.

3) We are naming the cluster version "Chico" "My little friend, Chico!". "Chico" the portable supercomputer, running off a cell phone battery.  ;)

4)  The WiFi and Bluetooth are great but for pure computing strength we will shut them both down and use the Gigabit Ethernet Port.  Every un-needed driver, program, or function shut down and removed increases the computing power of the Raspberry Pi 3 and 4.

5)  Next we will be shut down devices and functions not used to save computing and electric power. More on that here:  https://learn.pi-supply.com/make/how-to-save-power-on-your-raspberry-pi/  

6)  Then we will setup a RAMdrive and set the software to load the RAMdrive from the SDcard and then booting from the RAMdrive. (Because it is much faster)   https://www.domoticz.com/wiki/Setting_up_a_RAM_drive_on_Raspberry_Pi?

7)   When the cluster is complete it can be used as a high speed webserver.   In fact, the Raspberry Pi manufacturer uses a cluster of Pi's to host their website and support sites.  Very heavy, interactive websites with all sorts of multimedia too.   https://www.techrepublic.com/article/low-cost-raspberry-pi-4-cluster-hosts-official-pi-website-handles-record-traffic-for-pi-4-launch/

Update for Monday, September 16, 2019

Today we reviewed memory device speed for the Raspberry 4B.   

USB 3.0  vs MicroSD Storage

Since Raspberry Pi 4 now comes with two USB 3.0 ports, which support  ~100MB/s read/write speed,  Connecting a SSD USB 3.0 Drive gets even better speed..

But before you settle on one of those devices check out the transfer speed of the DDR4 on the Raspberry Pi 4.

DDR4 data transfer rate:

• DDR4 2133：17 GB/s
• DDR4 2400：19.2 GB/s
• DDR4 2666：21.3 GB/s
• DDR4 3200：25.6 GB/s

More soon.  - Todd :) 

Ransomware and other viruses are hitting corporations, government and schools all over Florida and the United States.  

The Computer Dudes have been using advanced technology and network design to keep your computers and servers clean and fast since 1997.

Today we had a breakthrough on "Brute Force" password cracking.   Our new hardware/software solution can process in less than 15 minutes what use to take it more than 8 hours.  The tech can be used for testing passwords or decrypting locked files like "Ransomware."  

Coming Soon:  A basic guide to dealing with Ransomware.
                           Better Security Practices
                           Better Routing, Security and Backups
                           Removing Ransomware and viruses from standard and virtual computers once they have been infected.

First off, what is web design and why is it important? Web design is the visual aspects and layout of a web page. It makes a huge impact on whether visitors stay on your site once they visit, or leave immediately afterwards because the website was just ugly or made them trust the company less. Either way, it is important to have a visually pleasing website in order to retain your visitors. 

In order to design a website, you don't need to know code, however it is VERY helpful to learn some. Free sites like Wix and Weebly allow users to create and design their own website utilizing a grid layout. Creating a website like this is free and a great way to buzz interest about web design or create a personal blog or online portfolio, but these websites usually cannot support large amounts of traffic and are impractical in the business world.

So lets say you do want to learn code and want a place to start. Web design can be done with HTML and CSS. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and contains the content of your website. CSS means cascading style sheet and this is how web designers change the style of the html. One of the best places to learn more about the languages themselves is W3 Schools online!