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201 items tagged "bug"

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Serious Oracle Flaw Revealed; Patch Coming

  Posted: January 17th, 2012, 5:58pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  GMGruman writes "A bug in Oracle Database that could take down large databases — or let a hacker do so — has been found, and Oracle promises a patch later today. When InfoWorld first heard of the bug two months ago, its investigation revealed how dangerous this bug could be, and after convincing Oracle to address the issue, InfoWorld held the news until a patch was available, so hackers could not exploit the bug in the meantime. Paul Venezia details just how this bug exposes companies to the possibility of databases going offline, and Eric Knorr asks Oracle users to help test the patch in their complex environments. (InfoWorld's tests in simpler environments show the patch works there.)"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  October, November the Worst Months For Writing Buggy Code

  Posted: December 20th, 2011, 10:35pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  chicksdaddy writes "Data from application testing firm Veracode suggests that the quality of application code submitted for auditing is pretty much constant throughout the year — except for the months of October and November, when the average density of vulnerabilities in the code jumps considerably. But why? Is it the pressure of deadlines? The stress of developers' lives (kids back to school, etc.)?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Software Bug Caused Qantas Airbus A330 To Nose-Dive

  Posted: December 20th, 2011, 6:12am CET by Unknown Lamer

  Tags:  bug  

  pdcull writes "According to Stuff.co.nz, the Australian Transport Safety Board found that a software bug was responsible for a Qantas Airbus A330 nose-diving twice while at cruising altitude, injuring 12 people seriously and causing 39 to be taken to the hospital. The event, which happened three years ago, was found to be caused by an airspeed sensor malfunction, linked to a bug in an algorithm which 'translated the sensors' data into actions, where the flight control computer could put the plane into a nosedive using bad data from just one sensor.' A software update was installed in November 2009, and the ATSB concluded that 'as a result of this redesign, passengers, crew and operators can be confident that the same type of accident will not reoccur.' I can't help wondering just how a piece of code, which presumably didn't test its input data for validity before acting on it, could become part of a modern jet's onboard software suite?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Ask Slashdot: How To Get Non-Developers To Send Meaningful Bug Reports?

  Posted: December 14th, 2011, 4:09am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  DemonGenius writes "I'm in the midst of a major rollout of one of our primary internal applications at work and we have a beta version available for all the staff to use. The problem here is most of the staff don't know how to send reports meaningful enough to get us devs started on solving their problems without constant back and forth correspondence that wastes both developer time and theirs. Some common examples are: screenshots of the YSOD that don't include the page URL, scaled screenshots that are unreadable, the complaint that wants to be a bug report but is still just a complaint, etc. From the user's perspective, they just send an email, but that email registers in our tracking system. Any thoughts on how to get the non-devs sending us descriptive and/or meaningful reports? Does anyone here have an efficient and user-friendly bug tracking system/policy/standard at their workplace? How does it work?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Java Apps Have the Most Flaws, Cobol the Least

  Posted: December 9th, 2011, 5:40pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  dcblogs writes "An analysis of 745 applications for violations of good architectural and coding practices found that Java applications had the most problems and Cobol-built systems, the least. Some 365 million lines of code were analyzed by Cast Software to assess 'technical debt,' or the cost to fix the violations. Java was calculated at $5.42 per line of code, while Cobol did best at $1.26. Cobol code had the least number of violations because programmers 'have been beating on it for 30 years,' said Cast. As far as Java goes, 'there are many people going into Java now that really don't have strong computer science backgrounds,' said its chief scientist, Bill Curtis."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Apache Flaw Allows Internal Network Access

  Posted: November 28th, 2011, 11:04am CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  angry tapir writes "A yet-to-be-patched flaw discovered in the Apache HTTP server allows attackers to access protected resources on the internal network if some rewrite rules are not defined properly. The vulnerability affects Apache installations that operate in reverse proxy mode, a type of configuration used for load balancing, caching and other operations that involve the distribution of resources over multiple servers."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Linux Kernel Power Bug Is Fixed

  Posted: November 11th, 2011, 10:21pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "The Linux kernel power bug that caused high power usage for many Intel Linux systems has finally been addressed. Matthew Garrett of Red Hat has devised a solution for the ASPM Linux power problem by mimicking Microsoft Windows' power behavior in the Linux kernel. A patch is on LKML for this solution to finally restore the battery life under Linux."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  Linux Kernel Power Bug Is Fixed

  Posted: November 11th, 2011, 10:21pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "The Linux kernel power bug that caused high power usage for many Intel Linux systems has finally been addressed. Matthew Garrett of Red Hat has devised a solution for the ASPM Linux power problem by mimicking Microsoft Windows' power behavior in the Linux kernel. A patch is on LKML for this solution to finally restore the battery life under Linux."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Charlie Miller Circumvents Code Signing For iOS Apps

  Posted: November 7th, 2011, 10:23pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  Sparrowvsrevolution writes "At the SysCan conference in Taiwan next week, Charlie Miller plans to present a method that exploits a flaw in Apple's restrictions on code signing on iOS devices, the security measure that allows only Apple-approved commands to run in an iPhone's or iPad's memory. Using his method, an app can phone home to a remote computer that downloads new unapproved commands onto the device and executes them at will, including stealing the user's photos, reading contacts, making the phone vibrate or play sounds, or otherwise using iOS app functions for malicious ends. Miller created a proof-of-concept app called Instastock that appears to show stock tickers but actually runs commands from his server, and even got it approved by Apple's App Store." Update: 11/08 02:54 GMT by U L : Not unexpectedly, Apple revoked Miller's developer license.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Google's iOS Gmail App Pulled

  Posted: November 2nd, 2011, 10:34pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  olsmeister writes "Google removed their new GMail app from the App Store due to a programming error that caused an error message related to the aps-environment entitlement string when the app was started and also caused the notifications not to function correctly. They are working to get the app fixed and are going to have the new one ready soon."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Avira Anti-Virus Detects Itself

  Posted: October 27th, 2011, 8:41pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  ddfall writes "After a recent update, Avira's anti-virus software reports its own AESCRIPT.DLL file as a trojan or spyware. From the article: 'The dodgy AntiVir virus definition file was quickly pulled and replaced with a new version – 7.11.16.146 – that resolves the problem, as explained in an official post on Avira's support forum.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Bug Opens Chrome to Easy Remote Code Execution

  Posted: October 24th, 2011, 5:31pm CEST by Unknown Lamer

  Tags:  bug  

  Orome1 writes "ACROS Security notified Google about a peculiar behavior of the Chrome browser that can be exploited for execution of remote code outside Chrome sandbox under specific conditions. It is another case of file planting, where an application loads a data file (as opposed to binary file, leading to binary planting) from the current working directory. Google decided that this was not a vulnerability, but rather a 'strange behavior that [they] should consider changing.' The reason they provided was that 'the social engineering level involved here is significantly higher than "Your computer is infected with a virus, download this free anti-virus software and run the exe file to fix it."'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Linux Kernel Developer Declares VirtualBox Driver "Crap"

  Posted: October 11th, 2011, 9:49pm CEST by Unknown Lamer

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Linux kernel developers have decided to mark the VirtualBox kernel driver as tainted crap for the significant number of problems this open-source driver has caused. The VirtualBox kernel driver reportedly causes memory corruption and other problems. With the driver being flagged as tainted crap, bug reports caused by the driver will be taken less seriously."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Linux Kernel Developer Declares VirtualBox Driver "Crap"

  Posted: October 11th, 2011, 9:49pm CEST by Unknown Lamer

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Linux kernel developers have decided to mark the VirtualBox kernel driver as tainted crap for the significant number of problems this open-source driver has caused. The VirtualBox kernel driver reportedly causes memory corruption and other problems. With the driver being flagged as tainted crap, bug reports caused by the driver will be taken less seriously."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Linux Kernel Developer Declares VirtualBox Driver "Crap"

  Posted: October 11th, 2011, 9:49pm CEST by Unknown Lamer

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Linux kernel developers have decided to mark the VirtualBox kernel driver as tainted crap for the significant number of problems this open-source driver has caused. The VirtualBox kernel driver reportedly causes memory corruption and other problems. With the driver being flagged as tainted crap, bug reports caused by the driver will be taken less seriously."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  SCADA Problems Too Big To Call 'Bugs,' Says DHS

  Posted: September 26th, 2011, 10:44pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  chicksdaddy writes "With the one year anniversary of Stuxnet upon us, a senior cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security says the agency is reevaluating whether it makes sense to warn the public about all of the security failings of industrial control system (ICS) and SCADA software used to control the U.S.'s critical infrastructure. DHS says it is rethinking the conditions under which it will use security advisories from ICS-CERT to warn the public about security issues in ICS products. The changes could recast certain kinds of vulnerabilities as 'design issues' rather than a security holes. No surprise: independent ICS experts like Ralph Langner worry that DHS is ducking responsibility for forcing changes that will secure the software used to run the nation's critical infrastructure. 'This radically cuts the amount of vulnerabilities in the ICS space by roughly 90%, since the vast majority of security "issues" we have are not bugs, but design flaws,' Langner writes on his blog. 'So today everybody has gotten much more secure because so many vulnerabilities just disappeared.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Book Review: JIRA 4 Essentials

  Posted: September 8th, 2011, 12:28am CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  frisket writes "The JIRA issue-tracking system has been around for seven years and has proved popular in commercial as well as open-source environments owing to its licensing arrangements (free of charge to certain classes of organizations, and source code available to developers). The release of v.4 in 2009 (now at 4.4) brought some major changes to the UI and searching, a new plugin architecture, and the ability to share project dashboards outside the system. Patrick Li's JIRA 4 Essentials is a comprehensive guide to the interface and facilities that both presents the material straightforwardly and avoids the trap of just being a guide to the menus. Although it is aimed mainly at the administrator, it will also be useful for the desktop user wanting a standalone system." Read on for the rest of Peter's review.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Mac OS X Lion LDAP Vulnerability Emerges

  Posted: August 29th, 2011, 9:52pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  hypnosec tips a bit of Apple news from late last week that got overshadowed by the headlines about Steve Jobs. According to El Reg, "People logging in to Macs running OS X 10.7, aka Lion, can access restricted resources using any password they want when the machines use a popular technology known as LDAP for authentication. Short for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, LDAP servers frequently contain repositories of highly sensitive enterprise data, making them a goldmine to attackers trying to burrow their way into sensitive networks." Initial reports about this bug cropped up less than a week after Lion was released.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Fix For Apache DoS Bug In the Pipes

  Posted: August 27th, 2011, 3:29pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Trailrunner7 writes with the report that "The Apache Software Foundation plans to have a fix available in the next day or so [Note: that means today, now. --Ed.] for the denial-of-service problem in Apache that was publicized late last week. The bug, which in some forms has been under discussion for more than four years, involves the way that the Web server handles certain overlapping range headers. The vulnerability is a denial-of-service bug, but it is considered serious because a remote attacker can essentially take a targeted server offline with little effort and resources. The Apache Software Foundation, which maintains the popular open-source Web server, updated its advisory on the vulnerability, saying that it expects to have a full fix available for the vulnerability within the next 24 hours."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Microsoft Patches 1990s-Era 'Ping of Death'

  Posted: August 10th, 2011, 6:18am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  CWmike writes "Microsoft on Tuesday issued 13 security updates that patched 22 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Windows, Office and other software, including one that harked back two decades to something dubbed 'Ping of Death.' While other patched vulnerabilities we more serious, one marked 'CVE-2011-1871' brought back memories for nCircle's Andrew Storms. 'This looks like the Ping of Death from the early-to-mid 1990s,' he said. 'Then, when a specially-crafted ping request was sent to a host, it caused the Windows PC to blue screen, and then reboot.' Two decades ago, the Ping of Death (YouTube video demonstration) was used to bring down Windows PCs remotely, often as a way to show the instability of the operating system."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  OS X Lion Ships With Faulty NVidia Drivers

  Posted: August 4th, 2011, 11:34pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  TeaCurran writes with this mildly ranty objection to the most recent Mac OS X update; several friends who have made the leap on their MacBook Pros have various other complaints, too, including system slowdowns that resemble crashes (except that their pointers still work) and recurring black screens for some configurations (with or without the kernel panics TeaCurran mentions) — what's been your experience? "Apple OS X Lion shipped with new NVidia video drivers that are causing anyone with a mid 2010 Macbook Pro to get a kernel panic every 5-10 minutes. Apple knew about the issue before shipping lion, hasn't responded to the issue, and is censoring posts in their support forum that mention words like 'boycott' and 'petition.' NVidia has responded that the drivers are the responsibility of Apple so they won't deal with the issue. How a major hardware manufacturer can ship such a faulty product without getting much press about it is completely beyond me."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Circuit Flaws Blamed For China Train Crash

  Posted: July 29th, 2011, 11:38pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  hackingbear writes "The Xinhua news agency reports that a signaling equipment circuit design flaw and lack of safety alertness in railway management caused a high-speed train to ram into a stalled train near the city of Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province on Saturday, leaving 40 people dead and 191 injured. A lightning strike triggered the malfunction, which resulted in a green alert light failing to turn red, leaving railway personnel unaware of the stalled train, the official said. The Beijing National Railway Research and Design Institute of Signal and Communication Co., which was responsible for designing and building the signaling system, has posted an apology letter on its website, offering condolences and promising to 'shoulder any due punishments that may result from the investigation.' Domestic media has raised more questions over the explanation. 'Why was such seriously flawed equipment in use for nearly two years without being detected? Why was it installed in as many as 76 rail stations across the country? Are there other problems with the railway apart from equipment flaws?'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Heat 'Most Likely Cause' of Pioneer Anomaly

  Posted: July 26th, 2011, 6:47am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  astroengine writes "Everything from clouds of dark matter, weird gravitational effects, alien tampering and exotic new physics have all been blamed for the 'Pioneer Anomaly' — the tiny, inexplicable sun-ward acceleration acting on the veteran Pioneer deep space probes. However, evidence is mounting for a more mundane explanation. Yes, it's the emission of heat from the spacecrafts' onboard radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), slowly nudging the Pioneers off course, that looks like the most likely culprit. It's unlikely that this new finding will completely silence advocates of more exotic explanations, however."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Linux 3.0 Release Delayed

  Posted: July 19th, 2011, 5:13am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  JustinRLynn writes "A recent Google+ Post by Linus Torvalds indicates that version 3.0 of the Linux kernel will have to wait due to the discovery of a 'subtle pathname lookup bug.' Linus indicates, 'We have a patch, we understand the problem, and it looks ObviouslyCorrect(tm), but I don't think I want to release 3.0 just a couple of hours after applying it.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  Linux 3.0 Release Delayed

  Posted: July 19th, 2011, 5:13am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  JustinRLynn writes "A recent Google+ Post by Linus Torvalds indicates that version 3.0 of the Linux kernel will have to wait due to the discovery of a 'subtle pathname lookup bug.' Linus indicates, 'We have a patch, we understand the problem, and it looks ObviouslyCorrect(tm), but I don't think I want to release 3.0 just a couple of hours after applying it.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Researcher Finds Dangerous Vulnerability In Skype

  Posted: July 15th, 2011, 9:33pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  alphadogg writes "A security consultant has notified Skype of a cross-site scripting flaw that could be used to change the password on someone's account, according to details posted online. The consultant, Levent Kayan, based in Berlin, posted details of the flaw on his blog on Wednesday and notified Skype a day later. He said on Friday he hasn't heard a response yet. The problem lies in a field where a person can input their mobile phone number. Kayan wrote that a malicious user can insert JavaScript into the mobile phone field of their profile." Skype has confirmed the flaw, but calls it 'minor,' saying it only affects people who communicate with a potential attacker on a regular basis. A fix is planned for next week.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Patched MS Bluetooth Flaw Exposes Even Disconnected PCs

  Posted: July 13th, 2011, 11:11am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Among the 22 security holes Microsoft issued updates to fix yesterday is a critical kernel-level Bluetooth flaw that could let nearby attackers break into vulnerable systems even when the targeted computer is not connected to a network. An attacker could use the bug to gain access to any unpatched, Bluetooth-enabled Windows Vista or Win7 computer within 100 meters (or much further with specialized tools), all before the target system even gets an alert that another computer is requesting a Bluetooth connection."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Life As a Bug Hunter

  Posted: June 19th, 2011, 10:05pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Bug Hunter Aaron Portnoy claims to have earned $60K in 3 months as a bug hunter when he was 19-years-old. Pretty impressive. Tighter company budgets and increased pressure to get a product ready by its release date means code isn't checked so thoroughly and bug frequency rises. From the article : 'Mozilla - makers of the Firefox web browser - were first to start a bug bounty programme in 2004. Their top prize is currently $3,000 (£1,800) and they have paid out about $40,000 (£25,000) per year since then. Their top earner is a student in Germany who has bagged more than $30,000 (£18,000) from a series of discoveries.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Life As a Bug Hunter

  Posted: June 19th, 2011, 10:05pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Bug Hunter Aaron Portnoy claims to have earned $60K in 3 months as a bug hunter when he was 19 years old. Pretty impressive. Tighter company budgets and increased pressure to get a product ready by its release date means code isn't checked so thoroughly and bug frequency rises. From the article: 'Mozilla — makers of the Firefox web browser — were first to start a bug bounty programme in 2004. Their top prize is currently $3,000 (£1,800) and they have paid out about $40,000 (£25,000) per year since then. Their top earner is a student in Germany who has bagged more than $30,000 (£18,000) from a series of discoveries.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Computer Glitch Friday Grounded US Airways Flights

  Posted: June 11th, 2011, 6:30pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  mschaffer writes "A computer glitch Friday night snarled the travel plans of US Airways customers, as reports flooded in of flights grounded around the country." As someone stranded for several hours yesterday by this outage, "glitch" seems like quite a euphemism. With outgoing flights blocked, and new ones arriving full of passengers expecting to meet connections, the atmosphere got a little heated. Customers could see nice weather, and planes lined up outside, but "The System Is Down" trumps all. The E concourse at Charlotte (a US Airways hub) was packed full of customers ranging from livid (a handful) to merely angry (most) to calmly resigned — which means those of us with seats, snacks, and books or computers. It was disheartening to see how brittle is the infrastructure the airline employs; with the part of the system visible to airline employees down, customers thought they might get more information, or even rebooking, through the US Airways website. But that was down, too, and all the desk staff could do is shrug.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Bug Bounties: Outbidding the Black Hats

  Posted: May 20th, 2011, 5:35pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses whether independent software developers should follow in the footsteps of Google and Mozilla and begin offering bug bounties before black hats pay up for their undisclosed software flaws. 'Whichever side of the fence you fall on, the fact is that bounties are being paid for undisclosed software flaws. They're just not always being paid by the vendor who developed the software. As ever more commercial data moves into the cloud and the stakes for cyber crime rise, black hat hackers are offering real money for exploitable bugs. In turn, when exploits happen, vendors may be held legally liable for any customer data that was compromised. Maybe it's time more software shops thought seriously about using their own cash to turn the tide in their favor.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Google Engineers Deny Hack Exploited Chrome

  Posted: May 12th, 2011, 5:14pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  CWmike writes "Several Google security engineers have countered claims that a French security company, Vupen, found a vulnerability in Chrome that could let attackers hijack Windows PCs running the company's browser. Instead, those engineers said the bug Vupen exploited to hack Chrome was in Adobe's Flash, which Google has bundled with the browser for over a year. Google's official position, however, has not changed since Vupen said it had sidestepped not only the browser's built-in 'sandbox' but also by evading Windows 7's integrated anti-exploit technologies. But others who work for Google were certain that at least one of the flaws Vupen exploited was in Flash's code, not Chrome's. 'As usual, security journalists don't bother to fact check,' said Tavis Ormandy, a Google security engineer, in a tweet earlier Wednesday. 'Vupen misunderstood how sandboxing worked in Chrome, and only had a Flash bug.' Chris Evans, a Google security engineer and Chrome team lead, tweeted, 'It's a legit pwn, but if it requires Flash, it's not a Chrome pwn.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Apple Releases iOS 4.3.3 To Fix Location Tracking

  Posted: May 4th, 2011, 11:40pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Apple has released a software update (iOS 4.3.3) to fix the much-talked-about iPhone Location Tracking bug. Apple faced a lot of criticism over the issue — iPhone and iPad secretly tracks users' locations and saves them in the device's cache as well as in a hidden file which is copied to the PC whenever the computer gets synced with device."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  More Windows Phone Update Problems

  Posted: April 30th, 2011, 2:21pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  angry tapir writes "Yet another problem has cropped up preventing some Windows Phone 7 users from getting two software updates, adding a new chapter to the update saga that started in February."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Amazon Automatic Pricing Lists Book At $23M

  Posted: April 26th, 2011, 4:43pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  leek writes "An Amazon.com pricing algorithm which lets sellers set prices based on other sellers' prices led to a positive feedback loop, causing the biology text The Making of A Fly to reach $23M. Biologist Micheal Eisen writes: 'What's fascinating about all this is both the seemingly endless possibilities for both chaos and mischief. It seems impossible that we stumbled onto the only example of this kind of upward pricing spiral. And as soon as it was clear what was going on here, I and the people I talked to about this couldn't help but start thinking about ways to exploit our ability to predict how others would price their books down to the 5th significant digit -- especially when they were clearly not paying careful attention to what their algorithms were doing.' The price of the book was reset but is currently back up to $976.98."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Computer Opens Unmanned Store For Holiday

  Posted: April 25th, 2011, 8:44pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  tomhudson writes "The Walkato Times in New Zealand is reporting that someone forgot to tell the computer not to unlock the supermarket on the Friday holiday. 'About half of the 24 people who came into the supermarket paid for their groceries using the self-scan service. The service stopped working after alcohol was scanned, requiring a staff member to check a customer's age before the system is unlocked.' The owner, Mr Miller, was quoted as saying 'I can certainly see the funny side of it... but I'd rather not have the publicity to be honest. It makes me look a bit of a dickhead.' Rather than take legal action, Mr Miller is hoping that the people who didn't pay will do the right thing."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Linux Kernel Suffering Power Management Regression?

  Posted: April 23rd, 2011, 12:18am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "It appears that there's a big power management regression in the Linux kernel for the 2.6.38 and 2.6.39 development releases, including the kernel to ship with Ubuntu 11.04 next week. It's reportedly causing a 10~30% increase in power consumption on many laptop computers."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

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  Linux Kernel Suffering Power Management Regression?

  Posted: April 23rd, 2011, 12:18am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "It appears that there's a big power management regression in the Linux kernel for the 2.6.38 and 2.6.39 development releases, including the kernel to ship with Ubuntu 11.04 next week. It's reportedly causing a 10~30% increase in power consumption on many laptop computers."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

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  Microsoft Kicks Off Third-Party Bug Warnings

  Posted: April 22nd, 2011, 11:37pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  Pigskin-Referee writes "Microsoft has expanded its vulnerability disclosure policy to include not only those in its own products, but also flaws in third-party software that runs on Microsoft operating systems. These will follow the same practices as the advisories issued for Microsoft's products, and it makes sense, because many users look to Microsoft to ensure that their computers are secure, even when the problem lies with a third-party program. The company will contact and coordinate with the third-party vendor before an advisory is issued."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  5 Out of 11 Crashed Unity In Canonical's Study

  Posted: April 16th, 2011, 8:23am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  dkd903 writes "Today the results of the Default Desktop User Testing for Ubuntu 11.04 was published by Canonical's Rick Spencer. The test was done using 11 participants from different backgrounds to test the new Unity interface that Ubuntu 11.04 will have." Though the Unity interface in the upcoming Ubuntu is a moving target, the bad news from this test is that about half of the testers managed to crash it.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  2011 MacBook Pros Confirmed To Crash Under Load

  Posted: March 20th, 2011, 2:25pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  sammcj writes "2011 MacBook crashing under heavy load?... you are not alone. While trying to figure out what was wrong with my fancy new MacBook I soon realized that the issue is very widespread."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Remote Bug Found In Ubuntu Kerberos

  Posted: February 16th, 2011, 1:47am CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Trailrunner7 writes "There's a remote vulnerability in the Kerberos implementation in several versions of Ubuntu, which could allow an attacker to cause a denial-of-service on vulnerable servers. The bug is in Ubuntu 8.04, Ubuntu 9.10, Ubuntu 10.04 and Ubuntu 10.10. The bug is in the Ubuntu implementation of the Kerberos authentication protocol. Ubuntu has released a slew of new packages to fix the flaw. The group said that in most cases, a normal system update will add the new fixes."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Recent HP Laptops Shipped CPU-Choking Wi-Fi Driver

  Posted: February 14th, 2011, 11:14am CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Computer manufacturers have recently come under fire for the continued practice of shipping machines with excessive bloatware. Software preinstalled on some recent HP laptops was worse than normal though, consuming anywhere from 25-99% CPU by making incessant WMI queries, resulting in overheating laptops and reduced battery life. Users on a computer Q&A site did some sleuthing, and revealed that HP Wireless Assistant — software which does nothing but tell the user when their WiFi adapter is turned on or off — was causing the problem. According to an HP support forum, the problem is fixed in later versions, but thousands of laptops have the software installed, and the software does not get updated automatically."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  The Joys of Running a Bug Bounty Program

  Posted: February 14th, 2011, 5:20am CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Trailrunner7 writes "When Barracuda Networks started its bug bounty program about three months ago, company officials weren't exactly sure what to expect. They didn't know whether there'd be an onslaught of submissions or the sound of crickets chirping. The reality turned out to be somewhere in the middle. Overall, the company has been getting about 10 bug reports a month, none of which has been very serious. But that doesn't mean the program hasn't been a success. Peck said that Barracuda also had run into the same problem that Google and others have: hackers don't pay much attention to directions. The company set out specific parameters for what kind of vulnerabilities in which products were in scope for the rewards, but some researchers still submitted flaws that were out of bounds, including bugs in partners' products or in the Barracuda corporate Web site."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  New Critical Bug In All Current Windows Versions

  Posted: January 29th, 2011, 2:02am CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Trailrunner7 writes "Microsoft is warning its users about a dangerous flaw in the way that Windows handles certain MHTML operations, which could allow an attacker to run code on vulnerable machines. The bug affects all of the current versions of Windows, from XP up through Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. Microsoft issued an advisory about the MHTML vulnerability, which has been discussed among security researchers in recent days. There is some exploit code available for the bug, as well. In addition to the advisory, Microsoft has released a FixIt tool, which helps mitigate attacks against the vulnerability in Windows."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Firefox 4, A Huge Pile of Bugs

  Posted: January 19th, 2011, 2:40pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  surveyork writes "Firefox 4.0 beta 9 (AKA 'a huge pile of awesome') was released on January 14, 2011. Firefox 4's release schedule includes a beta 10 and a release candidate before the final launch in late February. However, one wonders if this schedule won't slip again, since there are still more than 100 'hardblocker' bugs, more than 60 bugs affecting Panorama alone and 10 bugs affecting the just-introduced Tabs-on-Titlebar. Some long-standing bugs won't be fixed in time for Firefox 4 final either (example, example). Many startup bugs are currently pending, although Firefox 4 starts much faster than Firefox 3.6. As a side note, it's unlikely that Firefox 4 final will pass the Acid3 test, despite this being a very popular demand amongst Firefox enthusiasts. Perhaps we'll have to wait until Firefox 4.1 to have this 'huge pile of bugs' (mostly) fixed."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  PHP Floating Point Bug Crashes Servers

  Posted: January 6th, 2011, 7:55pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  angry tapir writes "A newly unearthed bug in certain versions of the PHP scripting language could crash servers when the software is given the task of converting a large floating point number, raising the possibility that the glitch could be exploited by hackers. The bug will cause the PHP processing software to enter an infinite loop when it tries to convert the series of digits "2.2250738585072011e-308" from the string format into the floating point format. The bug only seems to affect version 5.2 and 5.3 of the language." Adds reader alphadogg: "Computer scientist Rick Regan first reported the bug on Monday, and the PHP development team issued patches the following day."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Microsoft Confirms Zero-Day Hours After Exploit

  Posted: January 5th, 2011, 12:49am CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  CWmike writes "Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday an unpatched vulnerability in Windows just hours after a hacking toolkit published an exploit for the bug. A patch is under construction, but Microsoft does not plan to issue an emergency update to fix the flaw. The bug was first discussed Dec. 15 at a South Korean security conference, but got more attention Tuesday when the open-source Metasploit penetration tool posted an exploit module crafted by researcher Joshua Drake. Metasploit says successful attacks are capable of compromising victimized PCs, then introducing malware to the machines to pillage them for information or enlist them in a criminal botnet."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  iPhone Alarms Hit By New Year's Bug

  Posted: January 2nd, 2011, 8:10am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Non-recurring iPhone alarms stopped working on January 1 for devices running iOS 4.02, 4.1, and 4.2.1. Apparently, it will fix itself by January 3, and the current workaround is to set the alarm to repeat. My girlfriend wasn't impressed, sleeping in, and I wasn't either, having to race her to work!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Problems With Truncation On the Common Application

  Posted: December 25th, 2010, 2:55am CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  jaroslav writes "A combination of rigid caps on space and poor documentation of the space limits is adding stress on students applying for college using the Common Application, the New York Times reports. The story explains that the application lists word limits for questions, but actually enforces space limits. As a result, an answer with wide characters, such as 'w' or 'm,' may run over space even without reaching the stated word limit. It is not explained why an electronic submission must have such strictly enforced limits."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  When Computers Go Wrong

  Posted: December 12th, 2010, 3:41pm CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  Barence writes "PC Pro's Stewart Mitchell has charted the world's ten most calamitous computer cock-ups. They include the Russians' stealing software that resulted in their gas pipeline exploding, the Mars Orbiter that went missing because the programmers got their imperial and metric measurements mixed up, the Soviet early-warning system that confused the sun for a missile and almost triggered World War III, plus the Windows anti-piracy measure that resulted in millions of legitimate customers being branded software thieves."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Tobacco Virus Could Boost Li Batteries

  Posted: December 10th, 2010, 6:01pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  siliconbits alerts us to the possible use of one of the world's most destructive naturally occurring scourges, the tobacco mosaic virus, to boost the capacity of lithium ion batteries by 10 times. It seems the virus can be made to attach itself to the electrodes in a lithium cell perpendicularly, increasing the surface area of the electrode and greatly improving the battery's capacity to store energy. PhysOrg has some more detail on virus-enhanced batteries. Four years ago we discussed the use of the tobacco mosaic virus to enable fast-switching transistors.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Iron-Eating Bug Is Gobbling Up the Titanic

  Posted: December 10th, 2010, 2:50pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  gambit3 writes "A newly discovered microbe dubbed Halomonas titanicae is chewing its way through the wreck of the Titanic and leaving little behind except a fine dust, researchers report in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. 'In 1995, I was predicting that Titanic had another 30 years,' said Henrietta Mann, a civil engineering adjunct professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. 'It's deteriorating much faster than that now.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Computer Glitch Leaves Some Australians Without Cash

  Posted: November 27th, 2010, 7:40am CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "National Australia Bank payments to customers were again delayed today after a computer glitch yesterday morning due to a corrupted file in its mainframe computer. Upset consumers are now demanding compensation for any fees for late mortgage and credit card payments, overdrawn accounts or bounced direct debits charged by any institutions as a result of the mess."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Computer Crashed New Orleans Real Estate Market

  Posted: November 24th, 2010, 6:08pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  sustik writes "For a month now the New Orleans real estate market has been crippled by a computer crash that caused the loss of online data from the late 1980s that should be researched prior to the closing of any real estate transactions. 'The clerk of Orleans Parish Civil District Court said Tuesday that her office continues to make progress in resolving the computer problems that have been holding up real estate transactions in New Orleans for the past month, but there still was no indication of how soon the crisis might end.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Google Says No More Cash For Trash Web Bugs

  Posted: November 12th, 2010, 8:24pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  Trailrunner7 writes "It's bound to happen: you create a cool, forward looking incentive program designed to tap the 'wisdom of the crowd' and help make your products better, only to find out that, in fact, the 'crowd' isn't all that wise — and now wants you to pay cold, hard cash for their tepid ideas. That's the experience that Google appears to have had since announcing that it would extend its bounty program for bugs from its Chromium platform to the various Web applications that the company owns. In an updated blog post this week, the company said it has already committed to some $20,000 in bounties, but also provided some 'clarification' to the terms of the reward program, saying that — in essence — not all bugs are equal and that researchers dumping low priority vulnerabilities shouldn't expect to get much in return. 'The review committee has been somewhat generous this first week,' wrote Google's Security Team in a blog post. 'We've granted a number of awards for bugs of low severity, or that wouldn't normally fall under the conditions we originally described.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Bethesda Criticized Over Buggy Releases

  Posted: November 9th, 2010, 12:43pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  SSDNINJA writes "This editorial discusses the habit of Bethesda Softworks to release broken and buggy games with plans to just fix the problems later. Following a trend of similar issues coming up in their games, the author begs gamers to stop supporting buggy games and to spread the idea that games should be finished and quality controlled before release – not weeks after."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Serious Security Bugs Found In Android Kernel

  Posted: November 2nd, 2010, 11:46pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  geek4 writes with this excerpt from eWeek Europe: "An analysis of Google Android Froyo's open source kernel has uncovered 88 critical flaws that could expose users' personal information. An analysis of the kernel used in Google's Android smartphone software has turned up 88 high-risk security flaws that could be used to expose users' personal information, security firm Coverity said in a report published on Tuesday. The results, published in the 2010 edition of the Coverity Scan Open Source Integrity Report, are based on an analysis of the Froyo kernel used in HTC's Droid Incredible handset. ... While Android implementations vary from device to device, Coverity said the same flaws were likely to exist in other handsets as well. Coverity uncovered a total of 359 bugs, about one-quarter of which were classified as high-risk."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Serious Security Bugs Found In Android Kernel

  Posted: November 2nd, 2010, 11:46pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  geek4 writes with this excerpt from eWeek Europe: "An analysis of Google Android Froyo's open source kernel has uncovered 88 critical flaws that could expose users' personal information. An analysis of the kernel used in Google's Android smartphone software has turned up 88 high-risk security flaws that could be used to expose users' personal information, security firm Coverity said in a report published on Tuesday. The results, published in the 2010 edition of the Coverity Scan Open Source Integrity Report, are based on an analysis of the Froyo kernel used in HTC's Droid Incredible handset. ... While Android implementations vary from device to device, Coverity said the same flaws were likely to exist in other handsets as well. Coverity uncovered a total of 359 bugs, about one-quarter of which were classified as high-risk."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  New Site Aims To Be iTunes For Exploits

  Posted: October 15th, 2010, 7:40pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  Trailrunner7 writes "It's been tried before, but NSS Labs founder Rick Moy says his company's new Exploit Hub — a store front for exploit code — can work. In an interview, he explains why the current market for exploits doesn't work for the good guys, and why zero-day exploits don't help anyone. Above-board markets for software vulnerabilities have been around for close to a decade, but previous efforts to market exploits have had mixed results. The business of selling exploits versus vulnerabilities is fraught with danger, and organizations like WabiSabiLabi have operated eBay-style marketplaces for zero-day exploits for years, but haven't seen exploit writers beating a path to their door. The need for an above-board marketplace that can compete with the black market surely exists, but getting it to work is another matter entirely."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  IRS Servers Down During Crucial Week

  Posted: October 13th, 2010, 1:30am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  crimeandpunishment writes "A planned server outage turned into an unplanned glitch for the Internal Revenue Service, and it comes at a very bad time. The IRS planned the server outage for the holiday weekend ... but today they couldn't get the system back into operation. This week is the deadline for filing 2009 tax returns for taxpayers who got extensions. So far it's not having a huge impact since the shutdown only involves the updated version of the e-filing system, and most programs used by large tax companies like H&R Block will default to the older version. There's no estimate on when the system will be back up."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Why You See 'Free Public WiFi' In So Many Places

  Posted: October 11th, 2010, 8:32pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Almost anywhere you go these days (particularly at airports), if you check for available WiFi settings, you have a pretty good chance of seeing an ad hoc network for 'Free Public WiFi.' Of course, since it's ad hoc (computer to computer) it's not actually access to the internet. So why is this in so many places? Turns out it's due to a bug in Windows XP. Apparently, the way XP works is that if it can't find a 'favorite' WiFi hotspot, it automatically sets up the computer to broadcast itself as an ad hoc network point, using the name of the last connection the computer attempted. So... people see 'Free Public WiFi' and they try to log on. Then their own computer starts broadcasting the same thing, because it can't find a network it knows. And, like a virus, the 'Free Public WiFi' that doesn't work lives on and on and on."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  US Monitoring Database Reaches Limit, Quits Tracking Felons and Parolees

  Posted: October 9th, 2010, 10:24am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Thousands of US sex offenders, prisoners on parole and other convicts were left unmonitored after an electronic tagging system shut down because of data overload. BI Incorporated, which runs the system, reached its data threshold — more than two billion records — on Tuesday. This left authorities across 49 states unaware of offenders' movement for about 12 hours." As the astonished submitter asks, "2 billion records?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Stuxnet Infects 30,000 Industrial Computers In Iran

  Posted: September 26th, 2010, 7:50pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  eldavojohn writes "The BBC and AFP are releasing more juicy details about the now infamous Stuxnet worm that Iranian officials have confirmed infected 30,000 industrial computers inside Iran following those exact fears. The targeted systems that the worm is designed to infect are Siemens SCADA systems. Talking heads are speculating that the worm is too complex for an individual or group, causing blame to be placed on Israel or even the United States — although the US official claims they do not know the origin of the virus. Iran claims it did not infect or place any risk to the new nuclear reactor in Bushehr, which experts are suspecting was the ultimate target of the worm."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Why Browsers Blamed DNS For Facebook Outage

  Posted: September 26th, 2010, 5:44pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Julie188 writes "That was probably the only time 'DNS' will ever be a trending term on Twitter. The cause was Facebook's 2.5 hour outage on Thursday, which incorrectly told users trying to access the site that a DNS error was to blame. In truth, experts who've read Facebook's explanation say the site went down because Facebook gave itself a distributed denial-of-service attack when a system admin misconfigured a database. So why was DNS blamed? The 27-year-old communications protocol has been known to cause other, somewhat similar outages."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Facebook Unveils Details of Downtime

  Posted: September 25th, 2010, 6:15pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Facebook officially gave out more technical details on the endless loop in a database control mechanism that forced a 2.5-hour shutdown of the social site, and the resulting combination of a productivity burst, increased fertility (check back on June 25, 2011) and mass hysteria all around the world."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Aussie Student Responsible For Twitter Exploit

  Posted: September 22nd, 2010, 9:06pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  bennyboy64 writes "An Australian teen has caused havoc on Twitter by discovering an exploit that hit thousands of users, including Barack Obama's press secretary, and resulted in the tweets of a former British PM's wife linking to hardcore porn, The Sydney Morning Herald reports. Pearce Delphin, who is studying his last year at high school, said that he was surprised that 'so many famous people got infected.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Researchers Demo ASP.NET Crypto Attack

  Posted: September 19th, 2010, 10:57pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Trailrunner7 writes "The crypto attack against ASP.Net Web apps has gotten a lot of attention this week, and with good reason. Microsoft on Friday night issued a security advisory about the bug, warning customers that it poses a clear danger to their sites. Also on Friday, the researchers who found the bug and implemented the attack against it released a slick video demo of the attack, clearly showing the seriousness of the problem and how simple it is to exploit with their POET tool."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Facebook Glitch Let Spammer Post To Walls

  Posted: September 6th, 2010, 1:57pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  angry tapir writes "A clever spammer found a glitch in Facebook's photo upload system and used it to post thousands of unwanted Wall messages last week. Facebook confirmed the bug Friday, after notifying affected users of the issue. Most of the messages promised 'Free iPhones,' a common spam message on Facebook these days. Facebook says that the spammer hit thousands of profiles before the company removed the spammy photos and notified affected users. No accounts were compromised as a result of the bug."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Some Windows Apps Make GRUB 2 Unbootable

  Posted: August 28th, 2010, 11:21pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  KwahAG writes "Colin Watson, one of the Ubuntu developers, published in his blog information about Windows applications making GRUB 2 unbootable. Users of dual-boot Windows/Linux installations may face the problem, which boils down to particular Windows applications (Colin does not name them, but users point at least to HP ProtectTools, PC Angel, Adobe Flexnet) blindly overwriting hard disk content between the MBR and the first partition destroying information already stored there, in this particular case — the 'core image' of GRUB 2 (GRand Unified Bootloader) making the system unbootable."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Some Windows Apps Make GRUB 2 Unbootable

  Posted: August 28th, 2010, 11:21pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  KwahAG writes "Colin Watson, one of the Ubuntu developers, published in his blog information about Windows applications making GRUB 2 unbootable. Users of dual-boot Windows/Linux installations may face the problem, which boils down to particular Windows applications (Colin does not name them, but users point at least to HP ProtectTools, PC Angel, Adobe Flexnet) blindly overwriting hard disk content between the MBR and the first partition destroying information already stored there, in this particular case — the 'core image' of GRUB 2 (GRand Unified Bootloader) making the system unbootable."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Duke Research Experiment Disrupts Internet Traffic

  Posted: August 28th, 2010, 3:37pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  alphadogg writes with this excerpt from Network World about an experiment gone wrong which affected a big chunk of internet traffic yesterday morning: "It was kicked off when RIPE NCC (Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre) and Duke ran an experiment that involved the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) — used by routers to know where to send their traffic on the Internet. RIPE started announcing BGP routes that were configured a little differently from normal because they used an experimental data format. RIPE's data was soon passed from router to router on the Internet, and within minutes it became clear that this was causing problems. ... [f]or a brief period Friday morning, about 1 percent of all the Internet's traffic was affected by the snafu, as routers could not properly process the BGP routes they were being sent."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Windows DLL Vulnerability Exploit In the Wild

  Posted: August 24th, 2010, 2:12pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  WrongSizeGlass writes "Exploit code for the DLL loading issue that reportedly affects hundreds of Windows applications made its appearance on Monday. HD Moore, the creator of the Metasploit open-source hacking toolkit, released the exploit code along with an auditing tool that records which applications are vulnerable. 'Once it makes it into Metasploit, it doesn't take much more to execute an attack,' said Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle Security. 'The hard part has already been done for [hackers].'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Root Privileges Through Linux Kernel Bug

  Posted: August 19th, 2010, 11:39pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Lars T. writes "The H has a story about a Linux kernel bug that allows root level access. 'According to a report written by Rafal Wojtczuk (PDF), a conceptual problem in the memory management area of Linux allows local attackers to execute code at root level. The Linux issue is caused by potential overlaps between the memory areas of the stack and shared memory segments.' SUSE maintainer Andrea Arcangeli provided a fix for the problem in September 2004, but for unknown reasons this fix was not included in the Linux kernel. The bug is not related to the X Server bug found by Brad Spengler." As the linked article notes: "SUSE itself has the fix and SUSE Linux Enterprise 9, 10 and 11 as well as openSUSE 11.1 through 11.3 do not exhibit this vulnerability."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  40 Windows Apps Said To Contain Critical Bug

  Posted: August 19th, 2010, 7:59pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  CWmike writes "About 40 different Windows applications contain a critical flaw that can be used by attackers to hijack PCs and infect them with malware, says HD Moore, chief security officer at Rapid7 and creator of the open-source Metasploit penetration-testing toolkit. Gregg Keizer reports that the bug was patched by Apple in its iTunes software for Windows four months ago, but remains in more than three dozen other Windows programs, s. Moore did not reveal the names of the vulnerable applications or their makers, however. Each affected program will have to be patched separately. Moore first hinted at the widespread bug in a message on Twitter on Wednesday. 'The cat is out of the bag, this issue affects about 40 different apps, including the Windows shell,' he tweeted, then linked to an advisory published by Acros, a Slovenian security firm."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Linux Xorg Critical Security Flaw Silently Patched

  Posted: August 18th, 2010, 6:24pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  eldavojohn writes "On June 17th, the X.org team was notified by Invisible Things Lab of a critical security flaw (PDF) that affected both x86_32 and x86_64 platforms. The flaw deals with escalated privileges of a user process that has access to the X server. The founder of ITL said of the flaw, 'The attack allows a (unpriviliged) user process that has access to the X server (so, any GUI application) to unconditionally escalate to root (but again, it doesn't take advantage of any bug in the X server!). In other words: any GUI application (think e.g. sandboxed PDF viewer), if compromised (e.g. via malicious PDF document) can bypass all the Linux fancy security mechanisms, and escalate to root, and compromise the whole system.' This has apparently been a security flaw since kernel 2.6 was released. From the article, 'On 13 August, Linus Torvalds committed an initial fix, but several patches were added afterward for various reasons. The problem has been addressed in versions 2.6.27.52, 2.6.32.19, 2.6.34.4 and 2.6.35.2 of the kernel.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Linux X.org Critical Security Flaw Silently Patched

  Posted: August 18th, 2010, 6:24pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  eldavojohn writes "On June 17th, the X.org team was notified by Invisible Things Lab of a critical security flaw (PDF) that affected both x86_32 and x86_64 platforms. The flaw deals with escalated privileges of a user process that has access to the X server. The founder of ITL said of the flaw, 'The attack allows a (unpriviliged) user process that has access to the X server (so, any GUI application) to unconditionally escalate to root (but again, it doesn't take advantage of any bug in the X server!). In other words: any GUI application (think e.g. sandboxed PDF viewer), if compromised (e.g. via malicious PDF document) can bypass all the Linux fancy security mechanisms, and escalate to root, and compromise the whole system.' This has apparently been a security flaw since kernel 2.6 was released. From the article, 'On 13 August, Linus Torvalds committed an initial fix, but several patches were added afterward for various reasons. The problem has been addressed in versions 2.6.27.52, 2.6.32.19, 2.6.34.4 and 2.6.35.2 of the kernel.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Linux Xorg Critical Security Flaw Silently Patched

  Posted: August 18th, 2010, 6:24pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  eldavojohn writes "On June 17th, the X.org team was notified by Invisible Things Lab of a critical security flaw (PDF) that affected both x86_32 and x86_64 platforms. The flaw deals with escalated privileges of a user process that has access to the X server. The founder of ITL said of the flaw, 'The attack allows a (unpriviliged) user process that has access to the X server (so, any GUI application) to unconditionally escalate to root (but again, it doesn't take advantage of any bug in the X server!). In other words: any GUI application (think e.g. sandboxed PDF viewer), if compromised (e.g. via malicious PDF document) can bypass all the Linux fancy security mechanisms, and escalate to root, and compromise the whole system.' This has apparently been a security flaw since kernel 2.6 was released. From the article, 'On 13 August, Linus Torvalds committed an initial fix, but several patches were added afterward for various reasons. The problem has been addressed in versions 2.6.27.52, 2.6.32.19, 2.6.34.4 and 2.6.35.2 of the kernel.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Linux X.org Critical Security Flaw Silently Patched

  Posted: August 18th, 2010, 6:24pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  eldavojohn writes "On June 17th, the X.org team was notified by Invisible Things Lab of a critical security flaw (PDF) that affected both x86_32 and x86_64 platforms. The flaw deals with escalated privileges of a user process that has access to the X server. The founder of ITL said of the flaw, 'The attack allows a (unpriviliged) user process that has access to the X server (so, any GUI application) to unconditionally escalate to root (but again, it doesn't take advantage of any bug in the X server!). In other words: any GUI application (think e.g. sandboxed PDF viewer), if compromised (e.g. via malicious PDF document) can bypass all the Linux fancy security mechanisms, and escalate to root, and compromise the whole system.' This has apparently been a security flaw since kernel 2.6 was released. From the article, 'On 13 August, Linus Torvalds committed an initial fix, but several patches were added afterward for various reasons. The problem has been addressed in versions 2.6.27.52, 2.6.32.19, 2.6.34.4 and 2.6.35.2 of the kernel.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Cooling Pump Malfunction On ISS

  Posted: August 1st, 2010, 4:18pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  eldavojohn writes "On Saturday at 8pm GMT, the crew of the International Space Station awoke to alarm bells as one of two ammonia pumps shut down due to a spike in power. Their backup cooling (Loop B) is functioning as designed and NASA released an official statement: 'The crew is in no danger, but will need to work additional troubleshooting on Sunday to keep the station in a stable configuration, including the installation of a jumper cable to maintain proper cooling to the Zarya module in the Russian segment.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Oracle's Java Company Change Breaks Eclipse

  Posted: July 29th, 2010, 12:22am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  crabel writes "In Java 1.6.0_21, the company field was changed from 'Sun Microsystems, Inc' to 'Oracle.' Apparently not the best idea, because some applications depend on that field to identify the virtual machine. All Eclipse versions since 3.3 (released 2007) until and including the recent Helios release (2010) have been reported to crash with an OutOfMemoryError due to this change. This is particularly funny since the update is deployed through automatic update and suddenly applications cease to work."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  BSOD Issues On Deepwater Horizon

  Posted: July 23rd, 2010, 7:53pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  ctdownunder passes along this excerpt from a NY Times article about a rig worker's testimony concerning the April 20 accident at the Deepwater Horizon well: "The emergency alarm on the Deepwater Horizon was not fully activated on the day the oil rig caught fire and exploded, triggering the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker on Friday told a government panel investigating the accident. ... On Friday, Mr. Williams added several new details about the equipment on the vessel, testifying that another Transocean official turned a critical system for removing dangerous gas from the drilling shack to 'bypass mode.' When he questioned that decision, Mr. Williams said, he was reprimanded. ... Problems existed from the beginning of drilling the well, Mr. Williams said. For months, the computer system had been locking up, producing what the crew deemed the 'blue screen of death.' 'It would just turn blue,' he said. 'You’d have no data coming through.' Replacement hardware had been ordered but not yet installed by the time of the disaster, he said." The article doesn't mention whether it was specifically a Windows BSOD, or just an error screen that happened to be blue.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Microsoft Says No To Paying Bug Bounties

  Posted: July 23rd, 2010, 2:07pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Trailrunner7 writes "In the wake of both Mozilla and Google significantly increasing their bug bounties to the $3,000 range, there have been persistent rumors in the security community that Microsoft soon would follow suit and start paying bounties as well. However, a company official said on Thursday that Microsoft was not interested in paying bounties. 'We value the researcher ecosystem, and show that in a variety of ways, but we don't think paying a per-vuln bounty is the best way. Especially when across the researcher community the motivations aren't always financial. It is well-known that we acknowledge researcher's contributions in our bulletins when a researcher has coordinated the release of vulnerability details with the release of a security update,' Microsoft's Jerry Bryant said."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Nokia and RIM Respond To Apple's Antenna Claims

  Posted: July 17th, 2010, 9:57pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  awyeah writes "In response to Apple's press conference, where videos of a few devices were shown losing signal bars with a tight grip, RIM and Nokia have both taken shots at Apple. RIM's co-CEOs say that Apple's claims 'appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public's understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple's difficult situation.' Meanwhile, Nokia, noting that they are pioneers in antenna design and were the first company to bring to market a phone with an internal antenna, prioritizes 'antenna performance over physical design if they are ever in conflict.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Apple To Issue a 'Fix' For iPhone 4 Reception Perception

  Posted: July 2nd, 2010, 4:24pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  Lisandro and several other readers let us know that Apple has just released a statement addressing the signal issues a lot of users are having with their iPhone 4. They claim to have discovered the cause for the drop in bars, which is "both simple and surprising" — a wrong formula used to calculate how many bars are displayed for a given signal strength. "Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. ... we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place. ... We will issue a free software update within a few weeks that incorporates the corrected formula. Since this mistake has been present since the original iPhone, this software update will also be available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G." Wired notes that there is still a signal drop when the iPhone 4 is gripped in particular ways.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Dell Selling Faulty PCs

  Posted: June 29th, 2010, 6:56pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "PC maker Dell has been accused of selling thousands of desktop PCs despite knowing the machines contained faulty components, according to recently unsealed court documents first reported about on Tuesday by The New York Times."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Tracking Down a Single-Bit RAM Error

  Posted: June 25th, 2010, 1:10am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Hanji writes "We have discussed here before the potential effects of and protections against cosmic ray radiation, but for the average computer user, it's an obscure threat that doesn't affect them in any real way. Well, here's a blog post that describes a strange segfault and, after extensive debugging, traces it down to a single bit flip, probably caused by a stray cosmic ray. Lots of helpful descriptions of Linux debugging techniques in this one, and a pretty clear demonstration that this can be a real problem. I know I'm never buying a desktop without ECC RAM ever again!" The author acknowledges that it might not have been a cosmic ray-based error, but the troubleshooting steps are interesting no matter what the cause.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Hybrid Seagate Hard Drive Has Performance Issues

  Posted: June 2nd, 2010, 9:01am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  EconolineCrush writes "The launch of Seagate's Momentus XT hard drive was discussed here last week, and for good reason. While not the first hybrid hard drive on the market, the XT is the only one that sheds the Windows ReadyDrive scheme for an OS-independent approach Seagate calls Adaptive Memory. While early coverage of the XT was largely positive, more detailed analysis reveals a number of performance issues, including poor sequential read throughput and an apparent problem with command queuing. In a number of tests, the XT is actually slower than Seagate's year-old Momentus 7200.4, a drive that costs $40 less."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Facebook Bug Lets Hackers Delete Friends

  Posted: May 24th, 2010, 12:33pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  swandives writes "There's lot of talk about Facebook and privacy at the moment, but a bug in Facebook's website lets hackers delete Facebook friends without permission. Steven Abbagnaro, a student from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York reported the flaw, writing proof-of-concept code that scrapes publicly available data from users' Facebook pages and deletes all of their friends, one by one. The victim first has to click on a malicious link while logged into Facebook. Abbagnaro's code exploits the same underlying flaw that was first reported by Alert Logic security analyst, M.J. Keith, who discovered a cross-site request forgery bug, where the website doesn't properly check code sent by users' browsers to ensure that they were authorized to make changes on the site."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Microsoft Warns of Windows 7 Graphics Flaw

  Posted: May 19th, 2010, 3:40pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  Barence writes "A flaw with the graphics driver in Windows 7 could compromise the stability and security of PCs, Microsoft has warned. The vulnerability lies in the Windows Canonical Display Driver (cdd.dll) for the 64-bit versions of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft claims that the flaw could lead to machines rebooting or even allow a hacker to remotely execute code, although it claims either eventuality is improbable. Concerned users are being advised to disable Windows Aero until Microsoft can issue a fix."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  NASA Finds Cause of Voyager 2 Glitch

  Posted: May 19th, 2010, 7:42am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  astroengine writes "Earlier this month, engineers suspended Voyager 2's science measurements because of an unexpected problem in its communications stream. A glitch in the flight data system, which formats information for radioing to Earth, was believed to be the problem. Now NASA has found the cause of the issue: it was a single memory bit that had erroneously flipped from a 0 to a 1. The cause of the error is yet to be understood, but NASA plans to reset Voyager's memory tomorrow, clearing the error."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Palm App Catalog Glitch Locks Out WebOS Users

  Posted: May 16th, 2010, 3:12pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  hazmat2k writes "Palm's App Catalog appears to have suffered a meltdown of sorts, with users of Palm Pre, Pixi, Pre Plus, and Pixi Plus handsets reporting that after having downloaded a new title — whether paid or free — no aftermarket software would run properly. The issue remained even after fully erasing and restarting the phone; in fact, the apps were still installed even after that process was completed. Core functionality — calls, messaging, and data — were all unaffected. Palm acknowledged the issue on its blog, and later said that it had been fixed."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Twitter Bug Lets Users Force Others To Follow Them

  Posted: May 10th, 2010, 7:27pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  Several readers have sent word of a Twitter bug which has been allowing users to make any other user follow them by simply tweeting "accept [username]." People have been abusing it to make the accounts of various celebrities and publications follow them. Twitter acknowledged the bug and disabled the follow/unfollow system until they can get it fixed.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  House Calls For Hearing On Stock Market "Glitch"

  Posted: May 8th, 2010, 2:13pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Lucas123 writes "The House Financial Services securities subcommittee plans to hold a hearing next Tuesday to examine what caused the US stock market to plunge almost 1,000 points in a half hour Thursday, and it called on the SEC to investigate possible problems with computer algorithms that may have exacerbated a human order-entry error and led to the precipitous drop. 'Reports have surfaced that much of this movement was potentially as a result of a computer glitch,' Committee Chairman Kanjorski said. 'We cannot allow a technological error to spook the markets and cause panic. This is unacceptable. In this day and age and with the use of such complex technology, we should be able to make sure that our financial markets are effectively monitored and investors are protected.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Stock Market Sell-Off Might Stem From Trader's Fat Finger

  Posted: May 6th, 2010, 11:36pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  s122604 points out a CNBC story according to which "the catalyst for today's extraordinary price swing (at one point the Dow lost almost 9 percent in less than an hour) may have been because a trader entered a 'B' for billions instead of an 'M' for millions on a trade of Procter and Gamble: 'According to multiple sources, a trader entered a "b" for billion instead of an "m" for million in a trade possibly involving Procter & Gamble, a component in the Dow. (CNBC's Jim Cramer noted suspicious price movement in P&G stock on air during the height of the market selloff).' Unbelievable there are no safeguards to protect against this."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Win7 Can Delete All System Restore Points On Reboot

  Posted: May 2nd, 2010, 5:15am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Astonishingly, the so-called system restore feature in Windows 7 deletes restore points without warning when the system is rebooted. This forum thread on answers.microsoft.com shows some of the users who have experienced the problem. Today I did a clean install of Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit (no dual boot), and noticed that whenever the machine rebooted after installing an application or driver, the disk churned for several minutes on the 'starting Windows' screen. Turns out that churning was the sound of my diligently created system restore points being deleted. Unfortunately I only found this out when Windows barfed at a USB dongle and I wanted to restore the system to an earlier state. This is an extraordinarily bad bug, which I suspect most Windows 7 users won't realise is affecting them until it's too late."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  False Start For Cyber Security Challenge UK

  Posted: May 1st, 2010, 12:11pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Netcraft writes about an ironic 'false start' for the Cyber Security Challenge UK website. The new venture touts itself as 'a programme of national challenges, designed by experts, to identify and nurture the UK's future cyber security workforce.' Unfortunately, the website appears to be vulnerable to a basic cross-site scripting vulnerability which was easily found by some Twitter users."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Ubuntu LTS Experiences X.org Memory Leak

  Posted: April 21st, 2010, 10:25pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  MonsterTrimble writes "Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 is experiencing a major memory leak due to patches for X.org. 'An X.Org Server update that was pushed into the Lucid repository last week has resulted in the system being slower and slower as it is left on, until it reaches a point where the system is no longer usable. ... In order to make the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS deadline, the developers are looking at just reverting three of the patches, which brings the GLX version back to 1.2. Ubuntu developers are now desperate for people willing to test out this updated X.Org Server package so they can determine by this Friday whether to ship it with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or doing an early SRU (Stable Release Update). Right now this X.Org Server that's being tested is living in the ubuntu-x-swat PPA.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Ubuntu LTS Experiences X.org Memory Leak

  Posted: April 21st, 2010, 10:25pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  MonsterTrimble writes "Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 is experiencing a major memory leak due to patches for X.org. 'An X.Org Server update that was pushed into the Lucid repository last week has resulted in the system being slower and slower as it is left on, until it reaches a point where the system is no longer usable. ... In order to make the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS deadline, the developers are looking at just reverting three of the patches, which brings the GLX version back to 1.2. Ubuntu developers are now desperate for people willing to test out this updated X.Org Server package so they can determine by this Friday whether to ship it with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or doing an early SRU (Stable Release Update). Right now this X.Org Server that's being tested is living in the ubuntu-x-swat PPA.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

Slashdot: IT

• 

  McAfee Kills SVCHost.exe, Sets Off Reboot Loops For Win XP, Win 2000

  Posted: April 21st, 2010, 8:00pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Kohenkatz writes "A McAfee Update today (DAT 5958) incorrectly identifies svchost.exe, a critical Windows executable, as a virus and tries to remove it, causing endless reboot loops." Reader jswackh adds this terse description: "So far the fixes are sneakernet only. An IT person will have to touch all affected PCs. Reports say that it quarantines SVCHOST. [Affected computers] have no network access, and missing are taskbar/icons/etc. Basically non-functioning. Windows 7 seems to be unaffected." Updated 20100421 20:08 GMT by timothy: An anonymous reader points out this easy-to-follow fix for the McAfee flub.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Why Responsible Vulnerability Disclosure Is Painful and Inefficient

  Posted: April 11th, 2010, 5:20pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  A recent rant up at Attrition.org highlights problems with the responsible disclosure of security issues. While some vendors are happy to do their own research and patch reported problems, others drag their feet and make unreasonable demands on a researcher's time and effort, making anonymous public disclosure an ever-more-tempting option. Quoting: "After a couple hours of poking, I found a huge unauthenticated confidentiality hole. Once the euphoria wore off, I realized I had a big problem on my hands. I had to tell my employer's app owners and we had to assess risk and make a decision on what to do about it. After some quick meetings with stakeholders, we decided to severely limit access to the thing while we worked with the vendor. The vendor refused to acknowledge it was a security issue. Odd, considering most everyone who sees the issue unmistakably agrees that it is not acceptable. Now I'm forced to play hardball, yet nobody wants to fully-disclose and destroy relations with this vendor, whose software is somewhat relied on. Meanwhile, I know there are hundreds of institutions, small and large, using this software who have no idea that it has flawed security and who would probably not find the risk acceptable. What can I do? Nothing. Oh well, sucks to be them. ... I've had a vendor tell me to put a webapp firewall in front of their software. Did they offer to pay for it? No. That would be like Toyota telling its customers to buy ejector seats (unsubsidized ejector seats, that is) to resolve the accelerator problem in their vehicles. I've had other vendors demand I spend time helping them understand the issue, basically consulting for free for them. Have you ever knocked on a neighbor's door to tell them they left their headlights on? Did they then require you to cook them dinner? Exactly..."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Warhammer Online Users Repeatedly Overbilled

  Posted: April 9th, 2010, 5:53am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  TheSpoom writes "A screw-up in EA's Warhammer Online billing system has resulted in many players being charged upwards of 22 times for a one-month subscription, filling bank accounts with overdraft fees and the Warhammer forums with very angry players, who are discussing the issue quite vocally. EA has said that refunds are in progress and that '[they] anticipate that once the charges have been reversed, any fees that have been incurred should be refunded as well.' They haven't specifically promised to refund overdraft charges, only to ask customers' banks to refund them once the actual charges are refunded. They seem to be assuming banks will have no problem with this."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  MS Issues Emergency IE Security Update

  Posted: March 30th, 2010, 11:00pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  WrongSizeGlass writes "CNET is reporting that Microsoft has issued an emergency patch for 10 IE security holes. 'The cumulative update, which Microsoft announced on Monday, resolves nine privately reported flaws and one that was publicly disclosed. ... Software affected by the cumulative update addressing all the IE vulnerabilities includes Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008, Vista, and Windows 7.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Do Car Safety Problems Come From Outer Space?

  Posted: March 28th, 2010, 11:58pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Hugh Pickens writes "As electronic devices are made to perform more and more functions on smaller circuit chips, the systems become more sensitive and vulnerable to corruption from single event upsets. This is especially true of Toyota, which has led the auto industry in its widespread inclusion of electronic controls in the manufacture of their various car models. 'These circuit families store not just data, but their basic function electrically,' says Lloyd W. Massengill, director of engineering at the Vanderbilt Institute for Space and Defense Electronics at Vanderbilt University. 'In the unfortunate event of a particle flipping just the right bit, a circuit configured to carry out a benign action may be reprogrammed to carry out some unintended action.' Denise Chow writes in Live Science that some scientists are pointing to cosmic ray radiation as a plausible mechanism behind the sudden, unexplained acceleration reported to have occurred with the late model Toyotas."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  The Economics of Perfect Software

  Posted: March 28th, 2010, 7:40pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "This article takes the interesting perspective that leaving bugs in software is good — little ones, at least. This quote is particularly insightful: 'How do you know whether a bug is big or little? Think about who's going to hit it, and how mad they'll be when they do. If a user who goes through three levels of menus, opens an advanced configuration window, checks three checkboxes, and hits the 'A' key gets a weird error message for his trouble, that's a little bug. It's buried deep, and when the user hits it, he says 'huh,' clicks a button, and then goes on his merry way. If your program crashes on launch for a common setup, though, that's a big bug. Lots of people will hit it, and they will all be pissed. ... The cost of fixing all the bugs in your program and then being sure you fixed them all is way too high compared to the cost of having a few users hit some bugs they won't care about."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  China's Great Firewall Infects Other Countries

  Posted: March 26th, 2010, 6:50pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  angry tapir writes "A networking error has caused computers in Chile and the US to come under the control of the Great Firewall of China, redirecting Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube users to Chinese servers. Security experts are not sure exactly how this happened, but it appears that at least one ISP recently began fetching high-level DNS information, from what's known as a root DNS server, based in China. That server, operated out of China by Swedish service provider Netnod, returned DNS information intended for Chinese users, effectively spreading China's network censorship overseas."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Server Room Smells Can Be an Early Warning

  Posted: March 21st, 2010, 10:03am CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Barence writes "As embarrassing as it may seem, an eggy smell in a server room needn't mean broaching the delicate subject of hygiene with a colleague. It can actually be a signal that something is about to go wrong with your server setup, as this consultant discovered after days of assuming questionable personal habits were to blame. The culprit? An expiring UPS device, sending out its own unique warning signal."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  MS Virtual PC Flaw Defeats Windows Defenses

  Posted: March 17th, 2010, 12:01am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  Coop's Troops writes "An exploit writer at Core Security Technologies has discovered a serious vulnerability that exposes users of Microsoft's Virtual PC virtualization software to malicious hacker attacks. The vulnerability, which is unpatched, essentially allows an attacker to bypass several major security mitigations — DEP, SafeSEH and ASLR — to exploit the Windows operating system. As a result, some applications with bugs that are not exploitable when running in a not-virtualized operating system are rendered exploitable if running within a guest OS in Virtual PC."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Toyota Acceleration and Embedded System Bugs

  Posted: March 13th, 2010, 6:24pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "David Cummings, a programmer who worked on the Mars Pathfinder project, has written an interesting editorial in the L.A. Times encouraging Toyota to drop claims of software infallibility in their recent acceleration problems. He argues that embedded systems developers must program more defensively, and that companies should stop relying on software for safety. Quoting: 'If Toyota has indeed tested its software as thoroughly as it says without finding any bugs, my response is simple: Keep trying. Find new ways to instrument the software, and come up with more creative tests. The odds are that there are still bugs in the code, which may or may not be related to unintended acceleration. Until these bugs are identified, how can you be certain they are not related to sudden acceleration?'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Serious Apache Exploit Discovered

  Posted: March 8th, 2010, 2:58pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  bennyboy64 writes "An IT security company has discovered a serious exploit in Apache's HTTP web server, which could allow a remote attacker to gain complete control of a database. ZDNet reports the vulnerability exists in Apache's core mod_isapi module. By exploiting the module, an attacker could remotely gain system privileges that would compromise data security. Users of Apache 2.2.14 and earlier are advised to upgrade to Apache 2.2.15, which fixes the exploit." Note: according to the advisory, this exploit is exclusive to Windows.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Toyota's Engineering Process and the General Public

  Posted: March 7th, 2010, 4:37pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  Doofus writes "The Washington Post has published in today's paper an article titled 'Why it's so hard for Toyota to find out what's wrong' by Frank Ahrens on the Toyota situation and the difficulties of adequately conveying to Senators and Representatives — most of whom are non-technical — the debugging process. Ahrens interviews Giorgio Rizzoni, an 'expert in failure analysis' at Ohio State, who describes the iterations of testing that NHTSA will likely inflict on the Toyota sample cars they have purchased, and then moves into the realm of software and systems verification: 'He explained that each vehicle contains "layers of computer code that may be added from one model year to next" that control nearly every system, from acceleration to braking to stability. Rizzoni said this software is rigorously tested, but he added: "It is well-known in our community that there is no scientific, firm way of actually completely verifying and validating software."' Ahrens ends the piece with a quote from a 2009 LA Times interview with former UCLA psychology professor Richard Schmidt about how user reports are often unreliable: 'When the driver says they have their foot on the brake, they are just plain wrong. The human motor system is not perfect, and it doesn't always do what it is told.'" Toyota is currently planning an event to challenge evidence presented by professor David W. Gilbert that called into question Toyota's electronic throttle system.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  NVIDIA Driver Update Causing Video Cards To Overheat In Games

  Posted: March 5th, 2010, 11:13am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  After a group of StarCraft II beta testers reported technical difficulties following the installation of NVIDIA driver update 196.75, Blizzard tech support found that the update introduced fan control problems that were causing video cards to overheat in 3D applications. "This means every single 3D application (i.e. games) running these drivers is going to be exposed to overheating and in some extreme cases it will cause video card, motherboard and/or processor damage. If said motherboard, processor or graphic card is not under warranty, some gamers are in serious trouble playing intensive games such as Prototype, World of Warcraft, Farcry 3, Crysis and many other games with realistic graphics." NVIDIA said they were investigating the problem, took down links to the new drivers, and advised users to revert to 196.21 until the problem can be fixed.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Passage of Time Solves PS3 Glitch

  Posted: March 2nd, 2010, 7:27pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "A quick update on the widespread PlayStation 3 glitch we discussed recently: as of last night (Monday, March 1st) the problem has resolved itself. I powered up my PS3 to find the clock was set to April 29th, 2020, but once I went into the system menu and set the date and time via the internet I got an accurate date. That seems to be the test of whether your PS3 is 'fixed' or not; Sony says you should be all set."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Calendar Bug Disables Older PlayStation 3 Models

  Posted: March 1st, 2010, 10:08am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  JohnWilliams writes "The Sony PlayStation Network appears to be inaccessible to older ('phat') PS3 units. Players cannot play games that require a connection, even in single-player, offline mode, e.g. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Also, the system date resets to January 1, 2000. Sony is 'looking into it.' Speculation abounds that it is a bug related to 2010 being incorrectly flagged as a leap year. The newer PS3 Slim models seem to be working properly."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Scaling Algorithm Bug In Gimp, Photoshop, Others

  Posted: February 24th, 2010, 3:16am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  Wescotte writes "There is an important error in most photography scaling algorithms. All software tested has the problem: The Gimp, Adobe Photoshop, CinePaint, Nip2, ImageMagick, GQview, Eye of Gnome, Paint, and Krita. The problem exists across three different operating systems: Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. (These exceptions have subsequently been reported — this software does not suffer from the problem: the Netpbm toolkit for graphic manipulations, the developing GEGL toolkit, 32-bit encoded images in Photoshop CS3, the latest version of Image Analyzer, the image exporters in Aperture 1.5.6, the latest version of Rendera, Adobe Lightroom 1.4.1, Pixelmator for Mac OS X, Paint Shop Pro X2, and the Preview app in Mac OS X starting from version 10.6.) Photographs scaled with the affected software are degraded, because of incorrect algorithmic accounting for monitor gamma. The degradation is often faint, but probably most pictures contain at least an array where the degradation is clearly visible. I believe this has happened since the first versions of these programs, maybe 20 years ago."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Windows 7 Memory Usage Critic Outed As Fraud

  Posted: February 22nd, 2010, 12:48am CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  A few days ago, we ran word of a report alleging that Windows 7 consumed more memory than it should, based on a report from Devil Mountain Software; a followup post linked to Ars Technica's robust deconstruction of that claim. Now the story gets weird: Fred Flowers writes The original story quoted the company's CTO, Craig Barth on the issue. Now, InfoWorld editor in chief Eric Knorr has still more to add. From Knorr's blog at InfoWorld.com: 'On Friday, Feb. 19, we discovered that one of our contributors, Randall C. Kennedy, had been misrepresenting himself to other media organizations as Craig Barth, CTO of Devil Mountain Software (aka exo.performance.network), in interviews for a number of stories regarding Windows and other Microsoft software topics. ... There is no Craig Barth.' Knorr's post goes on to say that Kennedy has been fired from his blogging gig at InfoWorld over this 'serious breach of trust,' and that his blog will be removed."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  iPhone's Liquid Sensors Can Be Triggered By Wintertime Use

  Posted: February 20th, 2010, 3:33am CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "The Polish website Moje Jabluszko ran an experiment that proves the poor reliability of the liquid contact indicators (original, in Polish) installed by Apple in the iPhone. They performed three different tests to challenge the LCIs, which they recorded as a movie. They decided to mimic regular usage of the iPhone — meaning, you go outside where it could be cold or warm, then move inside in a building where temperature might be dramatically different, but still within covered conditions. So, they placed the iPhone in its box for one hour outside at -11 C, then moved it inside at room temperature for 24 hours. They repeated the experiment 3 times, and after the third cycle they could show that the LCI located in the audio jack plug started turning red! This is a clear proof that LCIs are not reliable and could turn red while the iPhone has been used under the defined environmental requirements defined by Apple. Here, only the condensing water could have been in contact with the sensor. In other words, even moving in and out during regular winter time will make you iPhone LCI turn red!" (In the tech specs for the iPhone, Apple rates the non-operating temperature range as -20 to 45 C.)

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Outlook 2010 Bug Creates Monster Email Files

  Posted: February 17th, 2010, 11:22pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Julie188 writes with this snippet from Network World "Office 2010 is still in beta and a patch is already out. Microsoft is trying to fix a bug in the email program Outlook 2010 Beta that creates unusually large e-mail files that take up too much space. The Outlook product team has offered a bug fix for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems that fixes the problem going forward, although previous emails will remain super-sized. This could be a problem for email programs that limit message sizes, such as Gmail or BlackBerry."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  The Worst Apple Products of All Time

  Posted: February 15th, 2010, 1:57pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "While Apple is frequently referred to as a leader in consumer electronic product design, the history of the company is filled with examples of poor design and questionable product strategies. This list of Apple's worst ever products includes some interesting trivia, including Apple's overpriced eWorld Internet service, their painfully bad attempt at a 'value' computer (the Performa), the much-loathed 'hockey puck' mouse, and the Apple Pippin gaming platform. The article also includes the infamous Apple III, which overheated so badly that it prompted one of the strangest repair techniques ever: 'Users were advised to pick the computer up a few inches off the ground and then drop it, hopefully jostling the chips back into position.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Windows Patch Leaves Many XP Users With Blue Screens

  Posted: February 11th, 2010, 11:38pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  CWmike writes "Tuesday's security updates from Microsoft have crippled Windows XP PCs with the notorious Blue Screen of Death, users have reported on the company's support forum. Complaints began early yesterday, and gained momentum throughout the day. 'I updated 11 Windows XP updates today and restarted my PC like it asked me to,' said a user identified as 'tansenroy' who kicked off a growing support thread: 'From then on, Windows cannot restart again! It is stopping at the blue screen with the following message: 'A problem has been detected and Windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer.' Others joined in with similar reports. Several users posted solutions, but the one laid out by 'maxyimus' was marked by a Microsoft support engineer as the way out of the perpetual blue screens."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Mozilla Wrongly Accused Sothink Addon of Malware

  Posted: February 11th, 2010, 3:27pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  eldavojohn writes "Mozilla has admitted to wrongly accusing Sothink of distributing a video downloader with a trojan virus as a Firefox addon. From their official blog: 'We've worked with security experts and add-on developers to determine that the suspected trojan in Version 4.0 of Sothink Video Downloader was a false positive and the extension does not include malware.' Before you go download that addon, however, keep in mind that Sothink has come under fire before for GPL violations and dishonesty."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Microsoft Says Windows 7 Not Killing Batteries

  Posted: February 9th, 2010, 10:20pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  VindictivePantz sends word that the Windows 7 team has posted a new blog entry discussing their conclusions about the reported Windows 7 battery failures. "To the very best of the collective ecosystem knowledge, Windows 7 is correctly warning batteries that are in fact failing and Windows 7 is neither incorrectly reporting on battery status nor in any way whatsoever causing batteries to reach this state. In every case we have been able to identify the battery being reported on was in fact in need of recommended replacement. ...every single indication we have regarding the reports we've seen are simply Windows 7 reporting the state of the battery using this new feature and we're simply seeing batteries that are not performing above the designated threshold. ... We are as certain as we can be that we have addressed the root cause and concerns of this report, but we will continue to monitor the situation."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Microsoft Finally To Patch 17-Year-Old Bug

  Posted: February 6th, 2010, 4:09am CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  eldavojohn writes "Microsoft is due for a very large patch this month, in which five critical holes (that render Windows hijackable by an intruder) are due to be fixed, in addition to twenty other problems. The biggest change addresses a 17-year-old bug dating back to the days of DOS, discovered in January by their BFF Google. The patch should roll out February 9th."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Woz Cites "Scary" Prius Acceleration Software Problem

  Posted: February 2nd, 2010, 4:20pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  theodp writes "Speaking at Discovery Forum 2010, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak went off topic and spoke about a 'very scary' problem with his 2010 Toyota Prius. 'I don't get upset and teed off at things in life, except computers that don't work right,' said Woz, who went on to explain he'd been trying to get through to Toyota and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration for three months, but could not get anyone to explore an alleged software-related acceleration problem. 'I have a new model that didn't get recalled,' Steve said. 'This new model has an accelerator that goes wild but only under certain conditions of cruise control. And I can repeat it over and over and over again — safely.' Toyota said it investigates all complaints. 'We're in the business of investigating complaints, assessing problems and finding remedies,' said Toyota's John Hanson. 'After man-years of exhaustive testing we have not found any evidence of an electronic [software] problem that would have led to unwanted acceleration.'" We recently discussed other problems Toyota has had with electronic acceleration systems.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  D-Link Warns of Vulnerable Routers

  Posted: January 19th, 2010, 3:53am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  wiedzmin sends in news of a vulnerability in some D-Link home routers. The company has made new firmware available for download. "D-Link announced today that the problem, discovered by security researchers SourceSec, affects three of its wireless routers: DIR-855 (hardware version A2), DIR-655 (versions A1 to A4), and DIR-635 (version B). The problem lies in D-Link's implementation of Cisco's Home Network Administration Protocol, which allows remote router configuration. The scope of the vulnerability is greatly reduced by the fact that these router models were not shipped with the affected firmware by default, so only customers who updated their firmware are potentially affected. Or at least this was indicated in the company's response to the SourceSac claim that all D-Link routers sold since 2006 were affected." SourceSec apparently made their research available, including an exploitation tool, without ever contacting D-Link.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  2010 Bug Plagues Germany

  Posted: January 7th, 2010, 2:47pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  krou writes "According the Guardian, some 30 million chip and pin cards in Germany have been affected by a programming failure, which saw the microchips in cards unable to recognize the year change. The bug has left millions of credit and debit card users unable to withdraw money or make purchases, and has stranded many on holiday. French card manufacturer Gemalto accepted responsibility for the fault, 'which it is estimated will cost €300m (£270m) to rectify.' They claim cards in other countries made by Gemalto are unaffected."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  2016 Bug Hits Text Messages, Payment Processing

  Posted: January 3rd, 2010, 3:01pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "It seems some systems are suffering from a Y2K16 bug. When 2009 ticked over to 2010, some Australian EFTPOS machines skipped to the year 2016. Coincidentally, some Windows Mobile users are also having issues with their new year SMSes coming from 2016. What function could cause this kind of error?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  SpamAssassin 2010 Bug

  Posted: January 2nd, 2010, 2:10am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  SEWilco writes "You might want to check your spam folder, as SpamAssassin has a rule which is tending to mark email sent in 2010 as spam. There is some discussion in a bug report. The SpamAssassin Wiki FH_DATE_PAST_20XX page doesn't have discussion, but it was updated today with a different date rule."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  One Expert Pegs Yearly Cost of IT Failure At $6.2 Trillion

  Posted: December 28th, 2009, 2:18pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  blognoggle writes "Roger Sessions, a noted author and expert on complexity, developed a model for calculating the total global cost of IT failure. Roger describes his approach in a white paper titled The IT Complexity Crisis: Danger and Opportunity. He concludes that IT failure costs the global economy a staggering $6.2 trillion per year."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Are Complex Games Doomed To Have Buggy Releases?

  Posted: December 16th, 2009, 10:40am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader points out a recent article at Gamesradar discussing the frequency of major bugs and technical issues in freshly-released video games. While such issues are often fixed with updates, questions remain about the legality and ethics of rushing a game to launch. Quoting: "As angry as you may be about getting a buggy title, would you want the law to get involved? Meglena Kuneva, EU Consumer Affairs Commissioner, is putting forward legislation that would legally oblige digital game distributors to give refunds for games, putting games in the same category in consumer law as household appliances. ... This call to arms has been praised by tech expert Andy Tanenbaum, author of books like Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. 'I think the idea that commercial software be judged by the same standards as other commercial products is not so crazy,' he says. 'Cars, TVs, and telephones are all expected to work, and they are full of software. Why not standalone software? I think such legislation would put software makers under pressure to first make sure their software works, then worry about more bells and whistles.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Office 2003 Bug Locks Owners Out

  Posted: December 14th, 2009, 8:20am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Microsoft Office 2003 bug is locking people out of their own files, specifically those protected with Microsoft's Rights Management Service. Microsoft has a TechNet bulletin on the issue with a fix. It looks like they screwed up and let a certificate expire. There's no information on when the replacement certificate will expire, though, or what will happen when it does."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Saboteur Launch Plagued By Problems With ATI Cards

  Posted: December 9th, 2009, 6:58am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Microsoft Investigates Windows 7 "Black Screen of Death"

  Posted: December 1st, 2009, 6:38pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  duguk writes "Microsoft has confirmed that it is investigating a problem described as the 'black screen of death,' which affects Windows 7 — and reports suggest it affects Vista and XP, too. The firm said it was looking into reports that suggest its latest security update, released on Tuesday 25 November, caused the problem. The error means that users of Windows 7 and earlier operating systems see a totally black screen after logging on to the system." Update: 12/01 22:35 GMT by KD : Microsoft now says that its November Windows updates are not causing the BlackSOD: "The company has found those reports to be inaccurate and our comprehensive investigation has shown that none of the recently released updates are related to the behavior described in the reports."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Dell Defect Turning 2.2GHz CPU Into 100MHz CPU?

  Posted: November 30th, 2009, 10:04pm CET by ScuttleMonkey

  Tags:  bug  

  jtavares2 writes "In what is being dubbed Throttlegate, scores of users on many message boards have been complaining about nexplicably aggressive throttling policies on their Dell Latitude E6500 and E6400 laptops which cause their CPUs to be throttled to less than 5% of their theoretical maximums even while at room temperatures. In many cases, the issue can be triggered just by playing a video or performing some other trivial, but CPU intensive, task. After being banned [PDF] from the Dell Forums for revealing 'non-public information,' one user went so far as to write and publish a 59-page report [PDF] explaining and diagnosing the throttling problem in incredible detail. Dell seems to be silent on the issue, but many users are hoping for a formal recall."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  FAA Computer Glitch Causes Widespread Airline Delays

  Posted: November 19th, 2009, 4:42pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  seven of five writes with this excerpt from an Associated Press report: "A problem with the FAA system that collects airlines' flight plans caused widespread flight cancellations and delays nationwide Thursday. It was the second time in 15 months that a glitch in the flight plan system caused delays. The FAA said in a statement that it is having a problem processing flight plan information. 'We are investigating the cause of the problem,' the agency said. 'We are processing flight plans manually and expect some delays. We have radar coverage and communications with planes.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Bizarre Droid Auto-Focus Bug Revealed

  Posted: November 18th, 2009, 8:59pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  itwbennett writes "Pity the poor engineer who had to find this one. One of the more interesting of the handful of bugs that have appeared since the launch of Verizon's Droid smartphone has to do with the on-board camera's auto-focus. Apparently it just didn't work. And then suddenly it did. Naturally, this off-again, on-again made the theories fly. But the real reason for the bug was revealed in a comment on an Engadget post by someone claiming to be Google engineer Dan Morrill: 'There's a rounding-error bug in the camera driver's autofocus routine (which uses a timestamp) that causes autofocus to behave poorly on a 24.5-day cycle,' said Morrill. 'That is, it'll work for 24.5 days, then have poor performance for 24.5 days, then work again. The 17th is the start of a new 'works correctly' cycle, so the devices will be fine for a while. A permanent fix is in the works.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Intel Pulls SSD Firmware Day After Release

  Posted: October 28th, 2009, 8:19pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  CWmike writes "Intel has pulled a firmware upgrade it released on Monday for its X25-M consumer solid-state drives after users complained that the software caused crashes. The company on Monday made available a software package called SSD Toolbox to monitor and manage the performance and health of X25-M SSDs on systems running Windows 7. The package included a firmware upgrade and software called SSD Optimizer that included diagnostic tools to help keep the Intel SSD running at high performance. 'We have been contacted by users with issues with the 34-nanometer Intel SSD firmware upgrade and are investigating. We take all sightings and issues seriously and are working toward resolution. We have temporarily taken down the firmware link while we investigate,' an Intel spokesman said in an e-mail. The spokesman declined to comment on when the company would issue updated firmware."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Major Snow Leopard Bug Said To Delete User Data

  Posted: October 13th, 2009, 1:59am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  inglishmayjer was one of several readers to send in the news of a major bug in Apple's new OS, 10.6 Snow Leopard, that can wipe out all user data for the administrator account. It is said to be triggered — not every time — by logging in to the Guest account and then back in to the admin account. Some users are reporting that all settings have been reset and most data is gone. The article links to a number of Apple forum threads up to a month old bemoaning the problem. MacFixIt suggests disabling login on the Guest account and, if you need that functionality, creating a non-administrative account named something like Visitor. (The Guest account is special in that its settings are wiped clean after logout.) CNet reports that Apple has acknowledged the bug and is working on a fix.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Server Failure Destroys Sidekick Users' Backup Data

  Posted: October 11th, 2009, 11:29am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Expanding on the T-Mobile data loss mentioned in an update to an earlier story, reader stigmato writes "T-Mobile's popular Sidekick brand of devices and their users are facing a data loss crisis. According to the T-Mobile community forums, Microsoft/Danger has suffered a catastrophic server failure that has resulted in the loss of all personal data not stored on the phones. They are advising users not to turn off their phones, reset them or let the batteries die in them for fear of losing what data remains on the devices. Microsoft/Danger has stated that they cannot recover the data but are still trying. Already people are clamoring for a lawsuit. Should we continue to trust cloud computing content providers with our personal information? Perhaps they should have used ZFS or btrfs for their servers."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Microsoft Plans Largest-Ever Patch Tuesday

  Posted: October 9th, 2009, 1:49am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  CWmike writes "Microsoft said it will deliver its largest-ever number of security updates on Tuesday to fix 13 flaws in every version of Windows, as well as Internet Explorer (IE), Office, SQL Server, important developer tools and Forefront Security client software. Among the updates will be the first for the final, or release to manufacturing, code of Windows 7, Microsoft's newest operating system. The 13 updates slated for next week, eight of them pegged 'critical,' beat the previous record of 12 updates shipped in February 2007 and again in October 2008." Update Reader Kurt Seifried writes to correct the math a bit, pointing to Microsoft's Advance Notification page for the release, which says that rather than 13 flaws, this Patch Tuesday involves "13 bulletins (eight critical and five important), addressing 34 vulnerabilities ... Most of these updates require a restart so please factor that into your deployment planning."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Sony Sued Over Bricked PS3s

  Posted: October 7th, 2009, 7:41pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  Zarrot writes "If Sony's recent 3.00 PS3 firmware update bricked your console, you may now have legal recourse thanks to a class action suit against Sony. The complaint alleges that thousands of users (PDF) were affected by the update, and in some cases the PS3 hardware itself was damaged. It continues, 'For owners who sustained hardware damage from the Sony-required update, Sony is charging a $150 repair fee per unit. Sony, responding to the numerous complaints about the unacceptable effects of the defective update, released a further, optional update that it claimed "improves system stability" — yet performance problems continued, and the new update did nothing to remedy the systems of users who sustained hardware damage."'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Coverity Report Finds OSS Bug Density Down Since 2006

  Posted: September 23rd, 2009, 8:27pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  eldavojohn writes "In 2008, static analysis company Coverity analyzed security issues in open source applications. Their recent study of 11.5 billion lines of open source code reveal that between 2006 and 2009 static analysis defect density is down in open source. The numbers say that open source defects have dropped from one in 3,333 lines of code to one in 4,000 lines of code. If you enter some basic information, you can get the complimentary report that has more analysis and puts three projects at the top tier in quality of the 280 open source projects: Samba, tor, OpenPAM, and Ruby. While Coverity has developed automated error checking for Linux, their static analysis seems to be indifferent toward open source."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Microsoft Says No TCP/IP Patches For XP

  Posted: September 15th, 2009, 2:13pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  CWmike writes "Microsoft says it won't patch Windows XP for a pair of bugs it quashed Sept. 8 in Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008. The news adds Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and SP3 to the no-patch list that previously included only Windows 2000 Server SP4. 'We're talking about code that is 12 to 15 years old in its origin, so backporting that level of code is essentially not feasible,' said security program manager Adrian Stone during Microsoft's monthly post-patch Webcast, referring to Windows 2000 and XP. 'An update for Windows XP will not be made available,' Stone and fellow program manager Jerry Bryant said during the Q&A portion of the Webcast (transcript here). Last Tuesday, Microsoft said that it wouldn't be patching Windows 2000 because creating a fix was 'infeasible.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Recovery Tool Includes Leak of Palm's WebOS 1.2

  Posted: September 5th, 2009, 10:37pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  El Royo writes "Today, Palm leaked version 1.2 of the webOS operating system that powers the Palm Pre. According to PreCentral, the new version was inadvertently included in a recovery tool Palm makes available. New features include support for the forthcoming App Catalog changes, copy and paste from Web sites, improved e-mail search and faster boot times."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  The Story of a Simple and Dangerous OS X Kernel Bug

  Posted: August 30th, 2009, 7:39am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  RazvanM writes "At the beginning of this month the Mac OS X 10.5.8 closed a kernel vulnerability that lasted more than 4 years, covering all the 10.4 and (almost all) 10.5 Mac OS X releases. This article presents some twitter-size programs that trigger the bug. The mechanics are so simple that can be easily explained to anybody possessing some minimal knowledge about how operating systems works. Beside being a good educational example this is also a scary proof that very mature code can still be vulnerable in rather unsophisticated ways."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Bug Means High School Students' Schedule Errors May Last Days

  Posted: August 27th, 2009, 11:53pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that thousands of high school students in Prince George's County missed a third day of classes Wednesday, and school officials said it could take more than a week to sort out the chaos caused by a computerized class-scheduling system as students were placed in gyms, auditoriums, cafeterias, libraries and classes they didn't want or need at high schools across the county and their parents' fury over the logistical nightmare rose. 'The school year comes up the same time every year,' said Carolyn Oliver, the mother of a 16-year-old senior who spent Wednesday in the senior lounge at Bowie High School. 'When I heard they didn't have schedules, I was like, "What have they been doing all summer?"' When school opened Monday, about 8,000 high school students had no class schedules and were sent to wait in holding spaces while administrators tried to sort things out." (More below.)

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Database Error Costs Social Security Victims $500M

  Posted: August 12th, 2009, 11:18pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Posts reports that the Social Security Administration has agreed to pay more than $500 million in back benefits to more than 80,000 recipients whose benefits were unfairly denied after they were flagged by a federal computer program designed to catch serious criminals. At issue is a 1996 law, which contained language later nicknamed the 'fleeing felon' provision, that said fugitives were ineligible to receive federal benefits. As part of its enforcement, the administration began searching computer databases to weed out people who were collecting benefits and had outstanding warrants. The searches captured dozens of criminals, including some wanted for homicide, but they also ensnared countless elderly and disabled people accused of relatively minor offenses such as shoplifting or writing bad checks and in some cases, the victims simply shared a name and a birth date with an offender." (Read more, below.)

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Microsoft Denies Windows 7 "Showstopper Bug"

  Posted: August 7th, 2009, 5:33pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  Barence writes "Windows chief Steven Sinofsky has taken the unusual step of responding in the comments of a blog posting that claimed Windows 7 was suffering from a potential 'showstopper bug'. Stories had been sweeping the Internet that using the chkdsk.exe utility on a second hard disk would lead to a massive memory leak bringing the operating system to its knees in seconds. Responding to a blog post titled 'Critical Bug in Windows 7 RTM,' Sinofsky wrote: 'While we appreciate the drama of "critical bug" and then the pickup of "showstopper" that I've seen, we might take a step back and realize that this might not have that defcon level.' He signs off with the words: 'deep breath.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Software Glitch Leads To $23,148,855,308,184,500 Visa Charges

  Posted: July 15th, 2009, 11:06pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Hmmm2000 writes "Recently several Visa card holders were, um, overcharged for certain purchases, to the tune of $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 on a single charge. The company says it was due to a programming error, and that the problem has been corrected. What is interesting is that the amount charged actually reveals the type of programming error that caused the problem. 23,148,855,308,184,500.00 * 100 (I'm guessing this is how the number is actually stored) is 2314885530818450000. Convert 2314885530818450000 to hexadecimal, and you end up with 20 20 20 20 20 20 12 50. Most C/C++ programmers see the error now ... hex 20 is a space. So spaces were stuffed into a field where binary zero should have been."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Some Overheating 3GS iPhones Glow Pink

  Posted: July 1st, 2009, 10:51am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that dozens of users of the recently released iPhone 3GS have reported overheating issues, with some iPhone owners unable to pick up the device because the handset gets so hot to the touch, while others say the casing turns pink with the heat. 'I am definitely experiencing issues with the iPhone running warm and quick battery life lost,' writes Tom Goldstein on one discussion board. 'The phone seems to warm up almost immediately if I am doing anything that pulls data over the network.' Some users have said the device has been too hot to put to their ear while making a phone call, and others say the overheating seems to occur when owners are using the iPhone's mapping software, which uses the handset's built-in GPS technology. Melissa J. Perenson writes at PC World: 'I became aware the handset had become very hot. Very, very hot — not just on the back, but the entire length of the front face, too.' Some gadget experts believe faulty batteries could be the cause of overheating and poor battery life. 'My guess is there's going to be a whole lot of batteries affected because these [iPhones] are from very large production runs,' said Aaron Vronko, who fixes iPods and iPhones. 'If you have a problem in the design of a series of batteries, it's probably going to be spread to tens of thousands [of device], if not hundreds of thousands, and maybe more.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Investigators Suspect Computers Doomed Air France Jet

  Posted: June 28th, 2009, 2:01pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  DesScorp writes "Investigators working with the wreckage of Air France flight 447 believe the aircraft suffered cascading system failures with the on-board computers, eliminating the automation the aircraft needed to stay aloft. 'Relying on backup instruments, the Air France pilots apparently struggled to restart flight-management computers even as their plane may have begun breaking up from excessive speed,' reports the Wall Street Journal. Computer malfunctions may not be an isolated incident on the Airbus A330, as the NTSB is now investigating two other flights 'in which airspeed and altitude indications in the cockpits of Airbus A330 aircraft may have malfunctioned.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Univ. of Wisconsin's 30-Year-Old Payroll System Needs a $40 Million Fix

  Posted: June 19th, 2009, 1:28am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  jaroslav writes "The University of Wisconsin is attempting to update a payroll system they have had in place since 1975, but spent $28.4 million in a 2004 attempt with no results, and now is experiencing new overruns in cost and time after 'not hav[ing] the full picture of how complex this project would be.' The current estimate of the redesign is $12 million and years of further work on top of the money already spent."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  Ridiculous Software Bug Workarounds?

  Posted: May 25th, 2009, 2:07pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  theodp writes "Ever get a workaround for a bug from a vendor that's so rigoddamndiculous that there has to be a clueless MBA or an ornery developer behind it? For example, Microsoft once instructed users to wiggle their mouse continuously for several minutes if they wanted to see their Oracle data make it into Excel (yes, it worked!). And more recently, frustrated HP customers were instructed to use non-HP printers as their default printer if they don't want Microsoft Office 2007 to crash (was this demoed in The Mojave Experiment?). Any other candidates for the Lame Workaround Hall of Fame?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

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  HP Recalls 70,000 Laptop Batteries

  Posted: May 19th, 2009, 6:34pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  angry tapir writes "Hewlett-Packard has recalled Lithium-Ion batteries used in some of its laptops, as they pose a fire hazard. The recall covers about 70,000 batteries used in the company's HP and Compaq-branded laptops. The affected laptops can be found here."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Skype Billing Gone Haywire For Some Users

  Posted: May 19th, 2009, 4:35pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Cousin Scuzzy writes "This morning I awoke to 26 e-mail messages from Skype and PayPal notifying me of multiple payments for my Skype account that had been charged to my credit card and subsequently refunded. At first I suspected that this was a new wave of spam that had slipped through my defenses, but it quickly became apparent that they were legitimate messages. I then began to worry that my Skype account had been compromised. The first message from Skype thanked me for setting up their "Auto-Recharge" service which automatically purchases Skype credit when the balance falls below a certain amount. This was very suspicious, as I had never requested this service. Based on posts to Skype's forum, it now appears that there have been serious billing problems at Skype relating to Auto-Recharge for over a month. Although I believe that all unauthorized charges to my credit card have been refunded, it is worrisome that Skype, or anyone, would charge my account erroneously. Skype, for their part, has not yet e-mailed me an explanation or posted one online. This problem reinforces my aversion to automatic bill payment services that give companies the authority to draw money from my bank account at their discretion." For all the Skype users out there, have you experienced this? For what it's worth, the company's own response on the linked forum thread says that the problem is now solved.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  
  

• 

  Flawed Map Says L.A.'s Crime Highest Next to Police HQ

  Posted: April 5th, 2009, 11:31pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  CNET briefly describes how a poorly chosen default behavior has led to an online crime map of Los Angeles (on a site designed at a cost of $362,000) that shows that "a location just a block from the department's new headquarters is the most crime-ridden place in the city." I wonder how often this sort of error would completely skew things like real-estate maps that attempt to show whether houses in a certain neighborhood are worth more than those in the one next door.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Princeton Student Finds Bug In LHC Experiment

  Posted: March 23rd, 2009, 10:09pm CET by ScuttleMonkey

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "A Princeton senior has found a bug in the hardware design for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the hardware used to record and capture events in the LHC, she discovered errors that were leading to the appearances of double images because of particle streams known as jets. 'Xiaohang Quan '09 was working on her senior thesis when she found a miscalculation in the hardware of the world's largest particle accelerator. Quan, a physics concentrator, traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, last week with physics professors Christopher Tully GS '98, Jim Olsen and Daniel Marlow for the annual meeting of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). This year, however, they also came to discuss Quan's discovery with the designers of the hardware for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, which, as part of the Large Hadron Collider, has the potential to revolutionize particle physics.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Public Bug Tracking and Open-Source Policy

  Posted: March 14th, 2009, 6:29pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  Observer writes "Bugs in software are nothing new, but when they're discussed in the open, how do open source projects adapt policy? A major regression in the Gnome project's session manager has seen some major distributions choose to refuse to follow the update rather than drop a major feature. Between Gnome's public bug tracker and similar trackers from distributions which released (and still distribute) the buggy version, months of debate provide an interesting case-study in the way front-line users and developers interact for better or for worse. What lessons can be learned here for release planning, bug triage, and marketing for a major open source project?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Google Solves Sharing Bug In Google Docs

  Posted: March 7th, 2009, 8:15pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  RichardDeVries writes "Three weeks ago, I contacted Google about a bug in Google Docs that shared documents without permission. The issue has been resolved and affected documents have had their collaborators removed. The documents' owners have been notified: 'To help remedy this issue, we have used an automated process to remove collaborators and viewers from the documents that we identified as being affected. Since the impacted documents are now accessible only to you, you will need to re-share the documents manually.' See my journal entry for details on my contact with Google. Although I think Google handled the issue admirably, this raises questions (again) about cloud computing, as well as Google's eternal beta-status for a lot of their services."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  How To Track the Bug-Trackers?

  Posted: January 28th, 2009, 10:22pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  schneecrash writes "Submitting bug reports — and waiting for responses etc. — seems to be SOP for developers and users alike, these days. Every project has some sort of bug-tracker — bugzilla, trac, mailing list, etc. E.g., we currently track 200+ external bugs across ~40 OSS projects. Half the bugs depend on something else getting fixed, first. Every bug has its own email thread, etc. Management asks 'How we doin' overall?,' and suddenly everyone involved gets to work removing dried gum from the bottom of their shoe. What do Slashdotters use/recommend for centrally keeping track of all the bugs you track across all those different bugtrackers? In particular, managing communications and dependencies across bugs? So far, the best method I've managed to use is bunches of PostIt-notes stuck to the screen of an out-of-commission 32" TV (glossy, non-matte screen, of course!)."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Bugs In Microsoft Technical Documentation Rising

  Posted: January 23rd, 2009, 4:18pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  snydeq writes "The number of bugs in technical documentation for Microsoft communication protocols continues to grow, according to court documents filed for ongoing antitrust oversight of the company in the US. Problems with the technical documentation — which includes 1,660 identified bugs as of Dec. 31, up from 1,196 bugs on Nov. 30 — remain the major complaint from lawyers representing the group of 19 states that joined the US Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft. Lawyers for the states have complained repeatedly that technical documentation issues are opening faster than Microsoft can close them. Nearly 800 Microsoft employees are working on the more than 20,000 pages of technical documentation, according to the court documents filed Wednesday."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Seagate Firmware Update Bricks 500GB Barracudas

  Posted: January 21st, 2009, 5:37am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  Voidsinger writes "The latest firmware updates to correct Seagate woes have created a new debacle. It seems from Seagate forums that there has yet to be a successful update of the 3500320AS models from SD15 to the new SD1A firmware. Add to that the updater updates the firmware of all drives of the same type at once, and you get a meltdown of RAID arrays, and people's backups if they were on the same type of drive. Drives are still flashable though, and Seagate has pulled the update for validation. While it would have been nice of them to validate the firmware beforehand, there is still a little hope that not everyone will lose all of their data."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Ubuntu's Laptop Killing Bug Fixed

  Posted: January 18th, 2009, 1:38am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  jeevesbond writes "Back in October of 2007 we discussed a bug that would dramatically shorten the life of laptops using Ubuntu. Ubuntu users will be glad to know that a fix has finally been released for Ubuntu versions 9.04, 8.10 and 8.04 (LTS). However, as this fix is not yet in the update repositories, anyone wishing to test it should follow these instructions for enabling the 'proposed' repository. Report your results on the original bug report. Happy testing!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Ubuntu's Laptop Killing Bug Fixed

  Posted: January 18th, 2009, 1:38am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  jeevesbond writes "Back in October of 2007 we discussed a bug that would dramatically shorten the life of laptops using Ubuntu. Ubuntu users will be glad to know that a fix has finally been released for Ubuntu versions 9.04, 8.10 and 8.04 (LTS). However, as this fix is not yet in the update repositories, anyone wishing to test it should follow these instructions for enabling the 'proposed' repository. Report your results on the original bug report. Happy testing!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Ubuntu's Laptop Killing Bug Fixed

  Posted: January 18th, 2009, 1:38am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  jeevesbond writes "Back in October of 2007 we discussed a bug that would dramatically shorten the life of laptops using Ubuntu. Ubuntu users will be glad to know that a fix has finally been released for Ubuntu versions 9.04, 8.10 and 8.04 (LTS). However, as this fix is not yet in the update repositories, anyone wishing to test it should follow these instructions for enabling the 'proposed' repository. Report your results on the original bug report. Happy testing!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Hope For Fixing Longstanding Linux I/O Wait Bug

  Posted: January 15th, 2009, 5:55am CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  DaGoodBoy writes "There has been a long standing performance bug in Linux since 2.6.18 that has been responsible for lagging interactivity and poor system performance across all architectures. It has been notoriously difficult to qualify and isolate, but in the last few days someone has finally gotten a repeatable test case! Turns out the problem may not even be disk related, since the test case triggers the bug only by transferring data either between two processes or threads. The test results are very revealing. The developer ran regressions all the way back to version 2.6.15 that demonstrate this bug has more than doubled the time to run the test in 2.6.28. Many, many people working at improving the desktop performance of Linux will be very happy to see this bug die. I know that I, personally, will find a way to send the guy that found this test case his beverage of choice in thanks. Please spread the word and bring some attention to this issue so we can get it fixed!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Hope For Fixing Longstanding Linux I/O Wait Bug

  Posted: January 15th, 2009, 5:55am CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  DaGoodBoy writes "There has been a long standing performance bug in Linux since 2.6.18 that has been responsible for lagging interactivity and poor system performance across all architectures. It has been notoriously difficult to qualify and isolate, but in the last few days someone has finally gotten a repeatable test case! Turns out the problem may not even be disk related, since the test case triggers the bug only by transferring data either between two processes or threads. The test results are very revealing. The developer ran regressions all the way back to version 2.6.15 that demonstrate this bug has more than doubled the time to run the test in 2.6.28. Many, many people working at improving the desktop performance of Linux will be very happy to see this bug die. I know that I, personally, will find a way to send the guy that found this test case his beverage of choice in thanks. Please spread the word and bring some attention to this issue so we can get it fixed!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Hope For Fixing Longstanding Linux I/O Wait Bug

  Posted: January 15th, 2009, 5:55am CET by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  DaGoodBoy writes "There has been a long standing performance bug in Linux since 2.6.18 that has been responsible for lagging interactivity and poor system performance across all architectures. It has been notoriously difficult to qualify and isolate, but in the last few days someone has finally gotten a repeatable test case! Turns out the problem may not even be disk related, since the test case triggers the bug only by transferring data either between two processes or threads. The test results are very revealing. The developer ran regressions all the way back to version 2.6.15 that demonstrate this bug has more than doubled the time to run the test in 2.6.28. Many, many people working at improving the desktop performance of Linux will be very happy to see this bug die. I know that I, personally, will find a way to send the guy that found this test case his beverage of choice in thanks. Please spread the word and bring some attention to this issue so we can get it fixed!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Microsoft Zunes Committing Mass Suicide

  Posted: December 31st, 2008, 4:04pm CET by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  jddeluxe writes "There are multiple reports springing up all over the internet of a mass suicide of Microsoft 30GB Zune players globally. Check Zune forums, Gizmodo, or other such sites; the reports are spreading rapidly, except apparently to the Microsoft official Zune site."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Tales From the Support Crypt

  Posted: December 30th, 2008, 7:22pm CET by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Talking viruses, infected physical devices, and lights that go out are some of the 'problems' Panda Security's tech support service has had to face. Many of them were not a result of computer viruses, but of confused users. This proves once again, that antivirus manufacturers must make a special effort to increase user knowledge regarding computer security and malware effects." For anyone who's been on the receiving end of such questions, now's a good time to tell your cathartic tale.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Left 4 Dead Bug Patched Quickly, EVE Exploit Takes 4 Years

  Posted: December 12th, 2008, 10:55am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  Earlier this week, news surfaced that some savvy modders of Valve's Left 4 Dead were able to find a way to enable console commands (meant for the PC version) in the Xbox 360 version of the game. This allowed players to increase the size of their character models to ridiculous proportions, spawn unlimited weapons for themselves (or unlimited enemies for other, unsuspecting players), and go around the map deleting objects as they saw fit. A video posted on YouTube showed how to enable the commands. Valve reacted swiftly to the issues, releasing a patch to disable access to the commands a few days later. Several readers have pointed out another exploit-related story which broke recently; in EVE Online, a bug that was reported and went un-patched for four years has recently come to light, apparently responsible for the fraudulent creation of trillions of ISK, the game's currency. An anonymous reader says that (illegitimate) sales of ISK between players and farmers run on the order of $35 per 450 million ISK.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Players Furious Over Buggy GTA IV PC Release

  Posted: December 5th, 2008, 10:29am CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  Jupix writes "It took Rockstar most of a year to port Grand Theft Auto IV to the PC, and while they claim this was because they wanted polish and quality with their PC release, it appears the result has been less than satisfactory. Players all over the internet are furious over numerous bugs in the release, ranging from nonfunctional internet registration and graphics glitches to completely inoperative installations. One of the game's largest retailers, Steam, has reportedly gone so far as to start handing out refunds to hordes of unsatisfied (and no doubt uncomfortably noisy) customers."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  LHC Repair To Cost At Least $21 Million

  Posted: November 18th, 2008, 2:08pm CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  ThanatosMinor writes "September's quench at the Large Hadron Collider is going to cost CERN at least $21 million and delay future collisions until June of 2009 at the earliest. Enjoy your last few months outside of an event horizon."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Bug In Android Passes Keystrokes To Root Shell

  Posted: November 8th, 2008, 7:18pm CET by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  pasokon writes "ZDNet reports on an Android bug in T-Mobile G1s with early versions of the firmware: 'When the phone booted it started up a command shell as root and sent every keystroke you ever typed on the keyboard from then on to that shell. Thus every word you typed, in addition to going to the foreground application would be silently and invisibly interpreted as a command and executed with superuser privileges. ... open the keyboard tray on your G1, ignore anything you see on the screen, and type these 8 keystrokes: (enter)-r-e-b-o-o-t-(enter). Poof, your phone will reboot.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Tapping the IPhone, Courtesy of Yahoo!

  Posted: October 9th, 2008, 10:16pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  tdalek writes "You may remember the recent Slashdot article about Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop exposing authentication information. It turns out that more Yahoo! applications are affected, although to a lesser degree. With Yahoo!'s desktop program, it transmitted the usernames and passwords in plaintext. Yahoo! is one of the lucky few default e-mail providers on the iPhone; sadly it looks like Apple didn't insist on encryption from Yahoo! On the iPhone, authentication is encrypted, but you can see all the messages sent and received in plaintext. Incoming messages are downloaded in plaintext over the standard imap port. Outgoing mail is a bit harder to find, it is apparently sent by an HTTP post request wrapped up inside a bundle of XML, but security through obscurity isn't very effective. If you have Yahoo! mail on your iPhone (and since its one of the default accounts, I'm assuming quite a few do), now would be a good time to forward it elsewhere for the time being."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  e1000e Bug Squashed — Linux Kernel Patch Released

  Posted: October 4th, 2008, 4:01am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  ruphus13 writes "As mentioned earlier, there was a kernel bug in the alpha/beta version of the Linux kernel (up to 2.6.27 rc7), which was corrupting (and rendering useless) the EEPROM/NVM of adapters. Thankfully, a patch is now out that prevents writing to the EEPROM once the driver is loaded, and this follows a patch released by Intel earlier in the week. From the article: 'The Intel team is currently working on narrowing down the details of how and why these chipsets were affected. They also plan on releasing patches shortly to restore the EEPROM on any adapters that have been affected, via saved images using ethtool -e or from identical systems.' This is good news as we move towards a production release!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  e1000e Bug Squashed — Linux Kernel Patch Released

  Posted: October 4th, 2008, 4:01am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  ruphus13 writes "As mentioned earlier, there was a kernel bug in the alpha/beta version of the Linux kernel (up to 2.6.27 rc7), which was corrupting (and rendering useless) the EEPROM/NVM of adapters. Thankfully, a patch is now out that prevents writing to the EEPROM once the driver is loaded, and this follows a patch released by Intel earlier in the week. From the article: 'The Intel team is currently working on narrowing down the details of how and why these chipsets were affected. They also plan on releasing patches shortly to restore the EEPROM on any adapters that have been affected, via saved images using ethtool -e or from identical systems.' This is good news as we move towards a production release!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  e1000e Bug Squashed — Linux Kernel Patch Released

  Posted: October 4th, 2008, 4:01am CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  ruphus13 writes "As mentioned earlier, there was a kernel bug in the alpha/beta version of the Linux kernel (up to 2.6.27 rc7), which was corrupting (and rendering useless) the EEPROM/NVM of adapters. Thankfully, a patch is now out that prevents writing to the EEPROM once the driver is loaded, and this follows a patch released by Intel earlier in the week. From the article: 'The Intel team is currently working on narrowing down the details of how and why these chipsets were affected. They also plan on releasing patches shortly to restore the EEPROM on any adapters that have been affected, via saved images using ethtool -e or from identical systems.' This is good news as we move towards a production release!"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

• 

  The Thirteen Greatest Error Messages of All Time

  Posted: September 24th, 2008, 7:51pm CEST by samzenpus

  Tags:  bug  

  Technologizer writes "They add insult to injury — and computing wouldn't be the same without 'em. So I rounded up a baker's dozen of the most important error messages in computing history — from Does Not Compute to Abort, Retry, Fail to the Sad Mac to the big kahuna of them all — the mighty Blue Screen of Death. And just in case my judgment is off, I include a poll to let the rest of the world vote for the greatest error message of all." I can't believe that "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" didn't make the list.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  OpenSUSE Beta Can Brick Intel e1000e Network Cards

  Posted: September 23rd, 2008, 3:23pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Some Intel cards don't just not work with the new OpenSUSE beta, they can get bricked as well. Check your hardware before you install!" The only card mentioned as affected is the Intel e1000e, and it's not just OpenSUSE for which this card is a problem, according to this short article: "Bug reports for Fedora 9 and 10 and Linux Kernel 2.6.27rc1 match the symptoms reported by SUSE users."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  OpenSUSE Beta Can Brick Intel e1000e Network Cards

  Posted: September 23rd, 2008, 3:23pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Some Intel cards don't just not work with the new OpenSUSE beta, they can get bricked as well. Check your hardware before you install!" The only card mentioned as affected is the Intel e1000e, and it's not just OpenSUSE for which this card is a problem, according to this short article: "Bug reports for Fedora 9 and 10 and Linux Kernel 2.6.27rc1 match the symptoms reported by SUSE users."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  OpenSUSE Beta Can Brick Intel e1000e Network Cards

  Posted: September 23rd, 2008, 3:23pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Some Intel cards don't just not work with the new OpenSUSE beta, they can get bricked as well. Check your hardware before you install!" The only card mentioned as affected is the Intel e1000e, and it's not just OpenSUSE for which this card is a problem, according to this short article: "Bug reports for Fedora 9 and 10 and Linux Kernel 2.6.27rc1 match the symptoms reported by SUSE users."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

• 

  How Asus Recovery Disks Ended Up Carrying Software Cracks

  Posted: September 22nd, 2008, 6:18am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Anthony_Cargile writes "We all now know about Asus shipping illegal software cracks and confidential documents/source code on their recovery DVD (and in the system root), but this article tells exactly how it happened. It's even more careless than you think, and most likely an accident."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  ITunes 8 a Real Killer App; Taking Down Vista

  Posted: September 11th, 2008, 11:30pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  CWmike writes "Apple 's latest version of iTunes crashes Windows Vista when an iPod or iPhone is connected to the PC, scores of users have reported on Apple's support forum. Plug in and Vista crashes and shows the 'blue screen of death.' The errors began showing up immediately after updating iTunes to Version 8.0, which Apple released Tuesday as part of its iPod refresh. 'I just installed iTunes 8 over my iTunes 7 on Vista [and] now whenever I plug in my iPod, I get a blue screen death. Three times so far. Even if it is plugged in on boot, I get a blue screen," said a user identified as 'sambeckett' on the support forum about 90 minutes after Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrapped up the iPod launch."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Nvidia 55nm Parts Are Bad Too

  Posted: August 29th, 2008, 6:27pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  JagsLive sends in a story (in somewhat inflammatory prose) from The Inquirer, which links to many others; they have been following developments in the alleged NVidia quality "fiasco" for some time. "Hot on the heels of its denials that anything is wrong with the G92 and G94s comes another PCN [Product Change Notification] that shows the G92s and G92b are being changed for no reason. Yup, the problems that are plaguing G84 and G86 are the same that affect seemingly all 65nm and now 55nm NVidia parts... It is hard to overstate how bad this is. Basically every 65nm and 55nm NVidia part appears to be defective... We are hearing of early failure rates in the teens percent for 8800GTs and far higher for 9600GTs... To make matters worse, NVidia has a mound of unsold defective parts that they are going to bleed out into the channel along side of the (hopefully) fixed parts. As a buyer, you have no way of knowing which one you are getting... Until NVidia comes fully clean on this fiasco, lists all the defective parts, and orders boxes clearly marked, you can't say anything other than just avoid them. Then again, since doing the right thing would likely bankrupt them, we wouldn't hold your breath for it to happen."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Strange Ubuntu/Vista Compatibility Bug, Solved

  Posted: August 15th, 2008, 3:36am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Walter Vos writes "Since I've been running Vista and Ubuntu in dual boot with a shared FAT32 partition for my personal folders, I've been seeing some strange compatibility issues between these two operating systems. Somehow Vista locks the folders on the FAT32 partition that are used for folders like Documents, Downloads, etc. A blogpost I wrote gives a detailed description of the problem and a fix for it."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  Strange Ubuntu/Vista Compatibility Bug, Solved

  Posted: August 15th, 2008, 3:36am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Walter Vos writes "Since I've been running Vista and Ubuntu in dual boot with a shared FAT32 partition for my personal folders, I've been seeing some strange compatibility issues between these two operating systems. Somehow Vista locks the folders on the FAT32 partition that are used for folders like Documents, Downloads, etc. A blogpost I wrote gives a detailed description of the problem and a fix for it."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Netflix Woes Mean a Gap In Shipments

  Posted: August 15th, 2008, 1:42am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Loopback writes "According to this article on ZDNet, it appears that I'm not the only one waiting for my NetFlix movies. It seems they are being bitten in the rear by their home-grown proprietary inventory management system. 'Netflix has been facing shipping delays and outages in its distribution centers for the last two days and is fumbling to find a fix. The tab is roughly $1.8 million to $3.6 million in revenue a day.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Massive VMware Bug Shuts Systems Down

  Posted: August 12th, 2008, 3:49pm CEST by CmdrTaco

  Tags:  bug  

  mattmarlowe writes "Imagine if Red Hat released a version of Linux, and after it was deployed, customers noticed that any processes with a start date of today would refuse to run? Well, that's what happened to VMware — a company that wants nearly all server applications running in virtual machines within a matter of years." Supposedly a fix will be available ... in 36 hours.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  RHN Bind Update Brings Down RHEL Named

  Posted: July 18th, 2008, 2:14pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  alexs writes "Red Hat's response to update bind through RHN, patching the DNS hole, made a fatal error which will revert all name servers to caching only servers. This meant that anyone running their own DNS service promptly lost all of their DNS records for which they were acting as primary or secondary name servers. Expect quite a few services provided by servers running RHEL to, errr, die until their system administrators can restore their named.conf. Instead of installing etc/named.conf to etc/named.rpmnew, Red Hat moved the current etc/named.conf to etc/named.conf.rpmsave and replaced etc/named.conf with the default caching only configuration. The fix is easy enough, but this is a schoolboy error which I am surprised Red Hat made. Unfortunately we were hit and our servers went down overnight while RHN dropped its bomb and I am frankly surprised there has not been more of an uproar about this."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

• 

  RHN Bind Update Brings Down RHEL Named

  Posted: July 18th, 2008, 2:14pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  alexs writes "Red Hat's response to update bind through RHN, patching the DNS hole, made a fatal error which will revert all name servers to caching only servers. This meant that anyone running their own DNS service promptly lost all of their DNS records for which they were acting as primary or secondary name servers. Expect quite a few services provided by servers running RHEL to, errr, die until their system administrators can restore their named.conf. Instead of installing etc/named.conf to etc/named.rpmnew, Red Hat moved the current etc/named.conf to etc/named.conf.rpmsave and replaced etc/named.conf with the default caching only configuration. The fix is easy enough, but this is a schoolboy error which I am surprised Red Hat made. Unfortunately we were hit and our servers went down overnight while RHN dropped its bomb and I am frankly surprised there has not been more of an uproar about this."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: IT

• 

  Dublin Air Traffic Control Brought Down By Faulty NIC

  Posted: July 18th, 2008, 9:40am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  Not so very long ago after passengers were left hanging by a similar glitch at LAX, Gilby4mPuck writes with another story of NIC failure leading to a disruption of air traffic, this time in Ireland, excerpting: "Data showing the location, height and speed of approaching planes disappeared from screens for 10 minutes each time. ... Thales ATM stated that in 10 similar air traffic control Centres worldwide with over 500,000 flight hours (50 years), this is the first time an incident of this type has been reported. ... '[They] confirmed the root cause of the hardware system malfunction as an intermittent malfunctioning network card which consequently overcame the built-in system redundancy,' said an IAA spokeswoman."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

• 

  Dell Colludes With RIAA, Disables Stereo Mix

  Posted: July 11th, 2008, 3:50am CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  RCTrucker7 writes with a link to a Maximum PC story, which begins: "Details of Dell's surreptitious collusion with RIAA (Record Industry Association of America) have emerged. Apparently, the computer manufacturer disabled the Stereo Mix/Mono Mix/Wave Out sound recording function on certain notebooks to assuage RIAA. The hardware functionality is being disabled without any prior notice and one blogger has even alleged that he was asked by Dell's customer support staff to [shell] out $99 if he desired the stereo mix option. Gateway and Pac Bell are the other two manufacturers to have bowed to RIAA at the expense of their customers' satisfaction and disabled stereo mix without warning." (There are some workarounds posted in the comments of the linked article.)

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  MS Security Patch Blocks Net Access For ZoneAlarm Users

  Posted: July 9th, 2008, 10:13pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "Users of Check Point ZoneAlarm security products, including the extremely popular, free-of-charge software firewall, have discovered that a Microsoft security update released on Tuesday has blocked their internet access. The firewall manufacturer is 'investigating the issue,' and so far the workaround seems to be to uninstall the recent DNS spoofing vulnerability fix MS08-037 (KB951748), and not reinstall it until Microsoft or Check Point have come up with updated versions of their products."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Coding Flaws Caused Moody's Debt Rating Errors

  Posted: May 21st, 2008, 11:31pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  An anonymous reader writes "The Financial Times has the story that billions in incorrect AAA ratings given out by Moody's were the result of a coding error in its computer models. 'Internal Moody's documents seen by the FT show that some senior staff within the credit agency knew early in 2007 that products rated the previous year had received top-notch triple A ratings and that, after a computer coding error was corrected, their ratings should have been up to four notches lower.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  The 25-Year-Old BSD Bug

  Posted: May 11th, 2008, 5:05pm CEST by Soulskill

  Tags:  bug  

  sproketboy writes with news that a developer named Marc Balmer has recently fixed a bug in a bit of BSD code which is roughly 25 years old. In addition to the OSnews summary, you can read Balmer's comments and a technical description of the bug. "This code will not work as expected when seeking to the second entry of a block where the first has been deleted: seekdir() calls readdir() which happily skips the first entry (it has inode set to zero), and advance to the second entry. When the user now calls readdir() to read the directory entry to which he just seekdir()ed, he does not get the second entry but the third. Much to my surprise I not only found this problem in all other BSDs or BSD derived systems like Mac OS X, but also in very old BSD versions. I first checked 4.4BSD Lite 2, and Otto confirmed it is also in 4.2BSD. The bug has been around for roughly 25 years or more."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Widespread Keyboard Failures on OLPC's XO-1

  Posted: April 20th, 2008, 8:30pm CEST by timothy

  Tags:  bug  

  otakuj462 writes "Many participants in OLPC's 'Give 1 Get 1' program of last November are now encountering what has come to be known as the 'stuck key' problem, in which one or more of the keys on their XO-1 laptop's built-in keyboard become stuck in an activated position, or are activated when adjacent keys are pressed. As of January 30th, the official word from OLPC is that the root cause of this problem is unknown because '[t]here are several manufacturers of the keyboards.' ('So far we don't know of any _reliable_ method of fixing the keyboard or the exact root cause.') It is unknown just how widespread this problem currently is, as the 30-day manufacturer's warranty has already expired for most G1G1 participants. However, the OLPC forums are full of reports. OLPC is currently deploying the XO-1 to children in Mongolia and Peru, as well as other developing nations. If OLPC is actively deploying units with known, critical hardware bugs, without a dedicated support infrastructure in place, to children who have never seen a computer before, should they still be considered to be a responsible organization? Did OLPC deploy their hardware too soon?"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Apple Error Leaves iPhone Developers In the Lurch

  Posted: April 8th, 2008, 10:08pm CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  canadacow writes "iPhone developers enrolled and active in the iPhone OS 2.0 beta program got a nasty surprise today when Apple inadvertently 'expired' the recently released version. While for a beta program this typically would not be an issue, Apple has yet to release a new deployment of the iPhone OS. So developers like myself who use their iPhone for both actual phone and iPod use are bricked. Of note, this particular expired build is just 11 days old."

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  Using X-ray Radiography To Reveal Ancient Insects

  Posted: April 2nd, 2008, 1:32am CEST by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  1shooter writes "Researchers in France are using a synchrotron as a giant X-ray machine to peer into the insides of opaque amber to reveal insects dating from the age of dinosaurs. 'The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, produces an intense, high-energy light that can pierce just about any material, revealing its inner structure... From more than 600 blocks, they have identified nearly 360 fossil animals: wasps, flies, ants, spiders.' The process reveals detailed 3D images that can be used to make near-perfect enlarged scale models of the bugs using a 'plastic printer.'"

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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  GCC 4.3.0 Exposes a Kernel Bug

  Posted: March 19th, 2008, 5:25am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  ohxten sends news from earlier this month that GCC 4.3.0's new behavior of not clearing the direction flag before a string operation on x86 systems poses problems with kernels — such as Linux and BSD — that do not clear the direction flag before a signal handler is called, despite the ABI specification.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Slashdot: Linux

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  GCC 4.3.0 Exposes a Kernel Bug

  Posted: March 19th, 2008, 5:25am CET by kdawson

  Tags:  bug  

  ohxten sends news from earlier this month that GCC 4.3.0's new behavior of not clearing the direction flag before a string operation on x86 systems poses problems with kernels — such as Linux and BSD — that do not clear the direction flag before a signal handler is called, despite the ABI specification.

  Read more of this story at Slashdot.