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Blackout Cause: Buggy Code

Posted by michael on 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."

2 of 377 comments (clear)

  1. Check for updates often by _bug_ · · Score: 0, Troll

    this patch has been available for over 8 months and they're just finding it now? sheesh!

  2. It wasn't my fault.... by ReadbackMonkey · · Score: 0, Troll


    It was terrorists! We had a lightning stike! We didn't have enough money to updgrade our equipment! My transformer didn't come back from the cleaners! Dick Cheney came in from out of town! Someone stole my power! There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! A GE software bug! IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD!