TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: AT&T Among 'Winners' For Worst Software Bugs

AT&T Among 'Winners' For Worst Software Bugs

mkuras (mkuras@ccs.neu.edu)
Tue, 08 Nov 2005 12:12:01 -0500

snipped from _Wired_ magazine:

Here, in chronological order, is the Wired News list of the 10 worst
software bugs of all time ... so far.

January 15, 1990 -- AT&T Network Outage: A bug in a new release of the
software that controls AT&T's #4ESS long distance switches causes
these mammoth computers to crash when they receive a specific message
from one of their neighboring machines -- a message that the neighbors
send out when they recover from a crash.

One day a switch in New York crashes and reboots, causing its
neighboring switches to crash, then their neighbors' neighbors, and so
on. Soon, 114 switches are crashing and rebooting every six seconds,
leaving an estimated 60 thousand people without long distance service
for nine hours. The fix: engineers load the previous software release.

http://wired.com/news/technology/bugs/0,2924,69355,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1

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