Computer Security Weekly, January 17, 2000
A little more Y2K. A few dozen truckers in Florida received bills saying that they were 100 years late in payment. Some people received bills for 100 years' back interest. There are some reports about people whose bank accounts temporarily showed 100 years' interest, but these are considered to be a bit specious, since interest due over -100 years probably wouldn't increase the amount in the account.
There appears to be a Y2K bug of some kind in the
MKS Toolkit Scheduler 6.1. The "Next Event" status, in one report, shows a date sometime in 2005, but the scheduled events seem to happen when properly due, so this appears to be something of a cosmetic problem.
The National Transportation Safety Board maintains a database of all aviation incidents in the US, and provides web access to capsule descriptions of various accidents. One such report in January 2000 is shown as happening in Testville. We will probably see a number of instances of test data remaining in systems for a while.
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/months.htm
http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/DCA/99A999....
Slightly more ominous is the fact that users connecting to the
Quicken site in the UK are being told that there is a new upgrade--in a rather informal and misspelled message. The original message reads
"There is an upgrade available to updated [sic] your current version of Quicken 2000. Would you like to download the update now ? Don't be afraid, it is just a test : My name is Nour".
Clicking on
"Tell me more" gives the message
"This version has some improvements in all the area [sic]".
This may be a leftover test message, but it may also be an invasion and hijacking of the site. No response has been forthcoming from
Quicken.
And one
RISKS reader in Indiana has a license which is to expire in the year 1000.
More amusing but not terribly important bugs are archived as
screenshots at:
The
Radio Data System (RDS) is a protocol that can keep a radio station tuned to a particular station as a moving vehicle crosses between areas with transmitters that are using different frequencies. The process can also be used to temporarily switch radios to a local transmitter channel for emergency traffic broadcasts. This system is generally used in countries that have a national broadcasting system, such as the BBC. UK authorities have now learned that pirate radio stations have learned how to use RDS, and are using it to force radios to switch, and stay locked in, to the pirate channels.
The copyright of the article
Computer Security Weekly, January 17, 2000 in
Computer Security is owned by Robert Slade. Permission to republish
Computer Security Weekly, January 17, 2000 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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