Blackout Cause: Buggy Code

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Posted by michael on Thursday February 12, 2004 @01:31AM from the civilization-meets-the-woodpecker dept.

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."

10 of 377 comments (clear)

fp? by CptChipJew · 2004-02-12 01:32 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

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Vonal Declosion
Wrong article! by ThePretender · 2004-02-12 01:35 · Score: 5, Funny

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 :-)
the bug of my dreams by vargul · 2004-02-12 01:35 · Score: 5, Funny

i have been dreaming writting such a bug myself. quite an achievement to blackout quarter of a continent with some crappy code...

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Aure entuluva!
Will they apply it?! by weave · 2004-02-12 01:43 · Score: 4, Funny

a patch is now available
I'm waiting for the next big power failure, then the excuses about why the patch was never applied. :)
Hmmm... by supersam · 2004-02-12 01:45 · Score: 4, Funny

One code to light it all,
One coder to code it,
One debugger to miss the bug
and into the darkness lead them. ...
Re:This spells trouble by duffbeer703 · 2004-02-12 01:51 · Score: 5, Funny

Indeed. We all must consider ourselves incredibly lucky that the /. editors are not working on energy management software or embedded medical devices.

Subscribe to Slashdot -- we have to keep these guys employed and out of the real world!

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Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Re:Text of the article by AKnightCowboy · 2004-02-12 01:55 · Score: 5, Funny

The comment preceding the code in question was:
// Not sure why this works for my test data. // Probably should come back and re-write this // if we have time before the product ships.
Re:Development vs Engineering by kinnell · 2004-02-12 02:16 · Score: 4, Funny

Is it true that some states have prohibited Microsoft from issuing MSCEs? I heard this somewhere but I can't remember. Something about Microsoft not having the authority to certify engineers
But couldn't the "Microsoft Certified" part be interpretted as a disclaimer? Something along the lines of "Burger King Certified Brain Surgeon".

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If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
Yeah, right. by Anonymous Coward · 2004-02-12 02:39 · Score: 5, Funny

Well, I have news for you: 50MV lines don't exist! Not out in the open, anyway. Was it 50 kV, perchance?
Re: ms WAS responsible - chain of events by galtsavenger · 2004-02-12 03:28 · Score: 5, Funny

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?