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Blackout Cause: Buggy Code
blanca writes "The big northeast blackout from last summer was caused in part by a software bug in an energy managment system sold by General Electic, according to a story on SecurityFocus. The bug meant that a computerized alarm that should have been triggered never went off, hindering FirstEnergy's response to the train of events that lead to the cascading blackout. Investigators found the bug in a intensive code audit following the outage, and a patch is now available."
The first thing I saw at that site, "Reliable, Field-Proven & Adaptable". Funny.
Well, that statement is only half false, it's reliability has been field-proven.
Vonal Declosion
It's dark here, what about a bug?
"Patch available"
Phew! then at least i can patch my own power craft before anything happens!
With well over one million hours of online operation, the XA/21 system has improved utilities' bottom lines by helping to: ... ...
Avert potential outages
Truth in advertising.
Oh this bug took six months to find and now a patch is available. I thought someone said the bug was found six months ago and now the patch was available. My bad, nobody would ever do that :-)
With all the brainpower on Slashdot, I'm sure we can find a way!
i have been dreaming writting such a bug myself. quite an achievement to blackout quarter of a continent with some crappy code...
Aure entuluva!
Where's the URL, dude? I want to apply it to my local copy.
The code did work, but there was no hardware left to signal the alarm ! Someone likely snarfed the alarm for a CPU usage monitor..
I thought the Canadians did it?
Disclaimer: This opinion was created without the use of any facts
I'm waiting for the next big power failure, then the excuses about why the patch was never applied. :)
One code to light it all, ...
One coder to code it,
One debugger to miss the bug
and into the darkness lead them.
But is anyone else thinking of Medal of Honor?
Sound zee alarm!!
back in my youngers day a bug patch was a piece of steel mesh placed over a hole to keep the moths out of the relay contacts.
This is Slashdot! Isn't that supposed to say Microsoft? It's always Microsoft.
I was going to put a sig here, but I had already submitted the message.
Let me guess, they blacked out the Northeast in retaliation for blowing up Siberia with our trojan-horse pump and valve control system.
man, is my dad going to be relieved when he reads this article. he works for firstenergy and will be glad to know that its not his fault that the blackout was his fault.
But couldn't the "Microsoft Certified" part be interpretted as a disclaimer? Something along the lines of "Burger King Certified Brain Surgeon".
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
whats funny is that the RCA didnt point to software at all...
here's what happened:
a 50 MV line arc'd to a 12" diameter tree.
and yes, there is no reason that a 12" tree should be anywhere CLOSE to a 50 MV line.
... hi bingo
one more time...
;)
root@powerplant12:/# apt-get update && apt-get -s upgrade
Get:1 ftp://ftp.gepower.com stable/main Packages [2726kB]
Hit ftp://ftp.gepower.com stable/main Release
Fetched 2.8MB in 2s (1408kB/s)
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
1 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Inst xa-21-base (2.1-3 GE-whoops:stable)
Conf xa-21-base (2.1-3 GE-whoops:stable)
Yup, its official...
Finally! The Y2K bug bit....
Oh wait..
Finally! The Y2K + 3 years, 8 months bug bit!
See? All those powdered eggs and shotgun shells paid off.
Hushed voice in my head: (PSST! The power was only out for a day or so)
Uhhhhh, nevermind.
WTF? Over?
Well, I have news for you: 50MV lines don't exist! Not out in the open, anyway. Was it 50 kV, perchance?
I'm sure this was mentioned in the original blackout posts - since the Blaster virus was running full tilt at that time, there was an increased load on servers, routers, switches, hubs and blinky things that go whoop! whoop!! WHOOOOP! The increased demand on computing resources caused increased power demand (not to mention the cranked ACs at the homes of the poor IT staff who were staring at their blackberrys and sweating bullets) which in turn caused the alarm conditions which didn't get alarmed properly and so the powergrid went down. All because of an MS security hole.
How's that?
Silly person. You didn't read the EULA on that software before clicking install. There is no warranty or guarantee that the software will even do what it claims to do let alone furction correctly in any way. You waive all right to hold the company responsible.
"I am not a number! I am a free man!"-- The Prisoner
Oh mgod, we better stop outsourcing our precious programming jobs to Florida!
It is unpatriotic to move them from California, where they belong! I bet they pay the people in Florida a lot less.
(This is a joke)
Snippet from the top of the file in question // Copyright (c) SCO group, Inc.
Now, where's thet $699 they owe?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I've always thought that as technology advances, individual households will become more and more self-sufficient, and eventually centralized government services (or pseudo-government services) will be eliminated. This includes power, water, and sewer, as well as phone, cable, internet, or anything else that crops up in the future.
This may seem impossible to people living in today's world, but it makes perfect sense in a world where technology is so efficient and perfected that every household can easily afford to be self-sufficient. There will no longer be a need to keep all our eggs in one basket, susceptible to large-scale failure like city-wide blackouts, censorship, and artificial pricing.
Of course, centralized services will fight the advancement of technology tooth and nail, attempting to have legislation passed to prohibit self-sufficiecy. So government will be the most significant barrier to the adoption of such technology. The less we depend on centralized services, the less we depend on government, and the less justification government has for assuming control over these markets.
The term 'Software Engineering' is bantered about in the software industry.
When I was young and dumb, I thought it was neat to have "Software Engineer" on my business cards. After a few years of seeing just how inept/underfunded/constrained nearly all software developers are, I changed my job title. Calling a typical programmer a "Software Engineer" is sort of like calling a convict in prison a "Legal Countermeasures Engineer."
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
Heh, that reminds me of a friend of mine who happens to be a PhD. He likes to poke fun at MDs by saying, "Back in the middle ages, it was the learned scholar who was called 'Doctor'. The man who cut into you was called 'BARBER'!"
And he's teased his physician about this on several occaisions, saying things like, "Just take a little off the top, please!".
My property abuts a set of high voltage transmission lines.....on a humid summer day I once stood in my back yard with a neon bulb and caused it to illuminate by simply dangling a three foot wire from one lead and touching the other.
Stop complaining, you have free power, Uncle Fester.
Table-ized A.I.
Chalk one up for software again! First the Mars lander Spirit and now this! w007! 1337 programming!
Software: 2
Hardware: 0
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.