It has happened before and it will happen again. The biggest case of a transaction counter overflowing a 16 bit signed integer was in 1985 at the Bank of New York - they came up 32 billion dollars short and nearly caused a collapse of the financial system. A description of the problem - Washington Post, 13 December 1985, p. D7 - Computer Snarled N.Y. Bank - $32 Billion Overdraft Resulted From Snafu - can be found in a message at:
http://www.mirrors.wiretapped.net/security/info/te xtfiles/risks-digest/1/risks-1.31
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It has happened before and it will happen again. The biggest case of a transaction counter overflowing a 16 bit signed integer was in 1985 at the Bank of New York - they came up 32 billion dollars short and nearly caused a collapse of the financial system. A description of the problem - Washington Post, 13 December 1985, p. D7 - Computer Snarled N.Y. Bank - $32 Billion Overdraft Resulted From Snafu - can be found in a message at: http://www.mirrors.wiretapped.net/security/info/te xtfiles/risks-digest/1/risks-1.31