Welcome to this week’s testing Quotes of the Week: Do you have any 46 year old friendships? $10 million to be spent on creating bug-free software and more.
U.S. National Science Fund Sponsors Project to Create Bug Free Software
“In our interconnected world, software bugs and security vulnerabilities pose enormous costs and risks. When you press the accelerator pedal or the brake in a modern car, for instance, you’re really just suggesting to some computer program that you want to speed up or slow down. The computer had better get it right.”
Andrew Appel, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University comments on how software has become so important in our daily lives that the quest to find bug-free software has become more important than ever. Prof. Appel along with colleagues from Yale, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania will work on the project (named DeepSpec) with funding of $10 million to develop bug-free complex software. Read More here
Do you Have any 46 Year Old Friendships?
“Thanks to a glitch in the social media site, users of all ages were encouraged to celebrate the 46th anniversary of their friendships on Thursday.”
Eliana Dockterman reports on the software bug that caused Facebook to recognise alot of friendships as lasting for 46 years. The reason the bug existed was speculated by Microsoft engineer Mark Davis to be because the “Friends Since” feature was introduced after some users became friends and a error in the programming language led to the years of friendship calculated wrong. Read More here
Testing the Security of Software in a Pacemaker
“Personally I am not worried about being remotely assassinated, I am more worried about software bugs”
We have previously reported here before on the story of Marie Moe, a security researcher from Norway who had a pacemaker fitted four years ago. She has researched the architecture behind her pace maker and has found out that it can be hacked wirelessly. But that isn’t the main issue she is worried about. Read More here
Cisco Forgot the Password for It’s Own Servers
“A number of C-Series servers have shipped to customers with a non-standard default password which prevents access to the Cisco Integrated Management Controller (CIMC) unless the configured password is provided”
Cisco shipped a number of C-Series servers recently but without the usual default password to access the admin. Instead of the usual “password”, Cisco went for “cisco1234”. However the issue was only noticed when new servers were being delivered and system admins could not access the Admin for the servers. Read More here
The End For Flash?
“The last year (what a fun it is to say this!) saw over 316 bug fixes coming to Adobe Flash Player, an average of 6.1 per week”
Shaikh Rafia reports on the slow demise of the Flas player. Flash had a record 316 bug fixes last year. As usage diminishes and the number of sites supporting Flash lessen, it appears that the plug-in might be finished soon. Read More here
