Programming mistakes can be some of the most devastating problems in the modern world. With our lives so interconnected with technology, a simple misplaced line of code could spell disaster, costing companies millions in damage or lost time. These eight mistakes are among the worst in history.
1 CrowdStrike’s Broken Update
CrowdStrike’s worldwide outage is reminiscent of the threat of Y2K for older computer users. The outage was caused by some broken code being pushed out in an automatic update. A bug in the cloud-based testing architecture signed the broken update as good to go, and the system just pushed it out to users.
That outage cost millions of dollars. Some news outlets estimate that it cost Microsoft around $44 million per Fortune 500 company that was inconvenienced. This particular programming error almost ground the world to a complete halt. It also demonstrates how dependent we are on technology in the 21st century.
2 The Heartbleed Bug
The Heartbleed Bug, a critical programming error discovered in 2014, exposed millions of websites and devices to potential data theft. This vulnerability in the widely-used OpenSSL cryptographic software library allowed attackers to access sensitive information from affected systems’ memory, including passwords and encryption keys. The bug’s impact was devastating, costing businesses an estimated $500 million in losses and remediation efforts.
The programming error at the heart of Heartbleed was a simple buffer over-read in the TLS heartbeat extension. This oversight in code implementation went undetected for two years, highlighting the catastrophic consequences of even minor coding mistakes in critical software. It also shows that you should be wary when using open-source software since there’s no telling what bugs exist in the code.
3 Ariane 5 Flight 501 Failure
The 1996 Ariane 5 Flight 501 failure stands as a stark reminder of how a seemingly minor programming error can lead to catastrophic consequences. The root cause was a software exception in the rocket’s inertial reference system triggered when a 64-bit floating-point number was converted to a 16-bit signed integer value. This overflow caused the guidance system to interpret correct flight data as a deviation from the expected flight path.
Just 37 seconds after launch, this error led to the rocket veering off course and subsequently self-destructing. The explosion resulted in the loss of four scientific satellites and a decade of scientific research. Beyond the launch’s immediate $370 million cost, the European Space Agency faced significant reputational damage and a delay in their commercial space ambitions.
4 Therac-25 Radiation Therapy Accidents
Radiation is always something to be wary of, but this particular incident is one that cost actual human lives, and it was all due to a programming error. This radiation therapy machine, designed to treat cancer patients, contained a software flaw that allowed it to deliver massive overdoses of radiation in certain circumstances. The bug stemmed from a race condition in the control software. If you typed fast enough, you could bypass the locks on the software.
This programming error resulted in at least six known accidents where patients received radiation doses hundreds of times higher than intended. Three of these incidents proved fatal. Programming errors like these not only lead to million-dollar lawsuits, but also the loss of lives, all because of something that could have been prevented with rigorous testing protocols.
5 The Mars Climate Orbiter
Sometimes, the most costly programming and software errors happen off-planet, as in this case. The core issue was a unit conversion mishap: Lockheed Martin, the spacecraft’s manufacturer, used English units (pound-seconds) in their software, while NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory expected metric units (newton-seconds) for thrust calculations.
Unsurprisingly, the orbiter crashed on the surface of Mars because the units NASA used were wrong. The loss of the $327 million spacecraft was a significant setback for NASA’s Mars exploration program, delaying critical climate studies and forcing a reevaluation of communication and verification processes between contractors and the space agency. It’s an excellent example of why having a design document for a project is crucial.
6 Knight Capital Group’s Trading Platform Flaw
Knight Capital used to be a well-respected financial firm that made its money from trading. The company’s proprietary trading software used algorithms to buy and sell automatically. Programmers were hired to make small tweaks to the code to make it more efficient. Unfortunately, one of these coders uploaded a code update that caused the entire algorithm to break.
In the space of 45 minutes, Knight Capital lost $440 million, nearly four times the company’s annual net income. This programming error not only decimated the firm’s capital but also severely damaged its reputation, leading to a dramatic drop in stock price and eventual acquisition by a competitor. It should be a lesson for programmers to find and squash bugs before putting their code into production.
7 Pentium FDIV Bug
If you’re Linux-inclined, you could do floating-point math in Bash, but what happens when an entire processor has a problem with floating-point division? In 1994, Intel’s flagship Pentium processor was the talk of the tech world. Unfortunately, the chip suffered from an error in the division lookup table used by the processor, where five entries out of 1,066 were mistakenly set to zero, leading to inaccurate calculations in specific scenarios.
Initially, Intel downplayed the issue, but as public awareness grew, particularly among scientists and engineers who relied on precise calculations, Intel was forced to acknowledge its severity. The company eventually offered to replace all affected chips, resulting in a $475 million charge to recall and replace millions of processors. This incident shows how something as small as a few digits in a lookup table could cost a company goodwill and millions of dollars in recall fees.
8 Mars Polar Lander Incident
Space has many dangers for hardware and software. Unlike the last Mars error, this one wasn’t due to a unit discrepancy. The $125 million spacecraft, designed to study the Martian climate and search for water ice, was lost during its descent to the planet’s surface. The root cause was traced back to a software flaw in the landing sequence.
The error occurred in the spacecraft’s touchdown sensors. These sensors were designed to detect leg deployment and surface contact, signaling the engines to shut off. However, the software failed to account for false signals generated when the lander’s legs deployed. This premature indication of landing caused the engines to shut down while the lander was still 40 meters above the surface, resulting in a catastrophic crash. NASA lost the lander and all the instruments and data that it would have collected. This catastrophe underscores why beta testing is such an important part of software design. Thorough testing could have prevented this.
Our modern lives are inexorably linked to computer programs. From the work that we do, to the games we play for fun, everything comes down to how programs run. Most of the time they run flawlessly, but when they don’t, it could cost a company millions. These programming and software errors are a warning to all developers to pay attention to small details. The actual cost might be much more than just hours spent fixing the code.
