Some of the most infamous bugs in the history of Software Development - Computer error caused US naval vessel to open fire 180 degrees off target, in the direction of Mexican merchant ship. - Gemini V splashed down 100 miles off target when program used 360 degrees for Earths rotation in 1 day, i.e. ignoring its movement around the Sun. - Vancouver Stock Exchange Index rose by 50% when 2 years of round-off errors in computer program were corrected. - Viking spacecraft had misaligned antenna due to faulty code patch. - F16 computer deadlocked, confusing left & right while plane was inverted. 180 degree heading error caused Soviet test missile to aim for Hamburg instead of the Arctic. - Autopilot error caused China Airlines 747 to stall near San Francisco. - Robot killed Japanese auto worker attempting to repair another robot. - AT&T software bug knocked out all long-distance phone service to Greece. Shuttle laser experiment failed because computer data was in nautical miles instead of feet. - Woman killed daughter & tried suicide after computer incorrectly diagnosed incurable disease. - Computer error caused nuclear reactor in Florida to overheat. - KAL flight 007 strayed, shot down due to heading being mistyped into autopilot. - The British destroyer H.M.S. Sheffield was sunk in the Falkland Islands war. - According to one report, the ships radar warning systems were programmed to identify the Exocet missile as friendly because the British arsenal includes the - Exocets homing device and allowed the missile to reach its target, namely the Sheffield. - The Mars Climate Orbiter doesnt orbit - The Ping of Death. A lack of sanity checks and error handling in the IP fragmentation reassembly code makes it possible to crash a wide variety of operating systems by sending a malformed ping packet from anywhere on the internet. Most obviously affected are computers running Windows, which lock up and display the so-called blue screen of death when they receive these packets. But the attack also affects many Macintosh and Unix systems as well. - Morris Worm - The first internet worm infects between 2,000 and 6,000 computers in less than a day by taking advantage of a buffer overflow. - Mariner 18 lost due to missing NOT in program. - Department store anti-theft microwave device reprogrammed heart pacemaker, killing its user.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Feb 2014 09:44:01 +0000