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Assignment: S E (1) Bs-Se (2) Spring 2019

This document contains summaries of several software failures and incidents caused by coding errors: 1) A Patriot missile defense system failed to detect an incoming attack in 1991 due to a software problem that caused inaccurate tracking calculations. This led to 28 soldier deaths. 2) In 1988, a graduate student unintentionally created a computer worm while experimenting that spread wildly and crashed thousands of computers due to a coding error. 3) A 1962 Mariner 1 spacecraft mission to Venus was aborted when a hyphen was omitted in computer code, causing incorrect guidance signals and threatening to make the rocket crash back to Earth. 4) The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange lost over 850,000 bitcoins worth $450 million

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18 views3 pages

Assignment: S E (1) Bs-Se (2) Spring 2019

This document contains summaries of several software failures and incidents caused by coding errors: 1) A Patriot missile defense system failed to detect an incoming attack in 1991 due to a software problem that caused inaccurate tracking calculations. This led to 28 soldier deaths. 2) In 1988, a graduate student unintentionally created a computer worm while experimenting that spread wildly and crashed thousands of computers due to a coding error. 3) A 1962 Mariner 1 spacecraft mission to Venus was aborted when a hyphen was omitted in computer code, causing incorrect guidance signals and threatening to make the rocket crash back to Earth. 4) The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange lost over 850,000 bitcoins worth $450 million

Uploaded by

DeadPool Pool
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Assignment

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING (1)


BS-SE (2)
SPRING 2019

DATE: 29/04/2019

Page 1 of 3
Patriot Missile Error:
In February of 1991, a U.S. Patriot missile defense system in Saudi Arabia, failed to
detect an attack on an Army barracks. A government report found that a software
problem led to an inaccurate tracking calculation that became worse the longer the
system operated. On the day of the incident, the system had been operating for
more than 100 hours, and the inaccuracy was serious enough to cause the system
to look in the wrong place for the incoming missile. The attack killed 28 American
soldiers. Prior to the incident, Army officials had fixed the software to improve the
Patriot systems accuracy. That modified software reached the base the day after the
attack.

The Morris Worm:

A program developed by a Cornell University student for what he said was supposed
to be a harmless experiment wound up spreading wildly and crashing thousands of
computers in 1988 because of a coding error. It was the first widespread worm
attack on the fledgling Internet. The graduate student, Robert Tappan Morris, was
convicted of a criminal hacking offense and fined $10,000. Morris’s lawyer claimed at
the trial that his client’s program helped improve computer security.

The Mariner 1 Spacecraft:

On a mission to fly-by Venus in 1962, this spacecraft barely made it out of Cape
Canaveral when a software-coding error caused the rocket to veer dangerously off-
course, threatening to crash back to earth. Alarmed, NASA engineers on the ground
issued a self-destruct command. A review board later determined that the omission
of a hyphen in coded computer instructions allowed the transmission of incorrect
guidance signals to the spacecraft. The cost for the rocket was reportedly more
than $18 million at the time.

Bitcoin Hack, Mt. Gox:

Launched in 2010, Japanese bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, was the largest in the
world. After being hacked in June, 2011, Mt. Gox stated that they’d lost over 850,000
bitcoins (worth around half a billion US dollars at the time of writing).
Although around 200,000 of the bitcoins were recovered, Mark Karpeles admits “We
had weaknesses in our system, and our bitcoins vanished.”

Page 2 of 3
Air-Traffic Control System in LA Airport:

It was an air traffic controller's worst nightmare. Without warning, on Tuesday, 14


September, at about 5 p.m. Pacific daylight time, air traffic controllers lost voice
contact with 400 airplanes they were tracking over the southwestern United States.
Planes started to head toward one another, something that occurs routinely under
careful control of the air traffic controllers, who keep airplanes safely apart. But now
the controllers had no way to redirect the planes' courses.

Australian ATM defect gives customers extra money:

With 40 ATMs giving out significant sums of money by mistake this Australian bank’s
customers thought they had hit the jackpot. Apparently with the machines operating
in a standby mode customers could withdraw funds without being prevented by any
account limits. With this issue lasting more than 5 hours large queues formed with
customers withdrawing funds well past limits set on their accounts.

Conclusion:

There’s a predictable pattern when high profile failures like this happen. Blame the
test team. They blame poor process (like the test management systems in place),
lack of resources and poor requirement definition. Senior management wake up to
the importance of the QA function. Budgets double to ensure it doesn’t happen
again. When the dust settles budgets get cut as part of a company wide efficiency
drive. Failures happen due to lack of resources/commitment to the QA process. The
cycle starts all over again.

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