As Social Media Outage Causes Massive Loss to Mark Zuckerberg, Here are 10 Worst Software Crashes

Technological disasters that rocked the corporate world

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta lost $3 billion because of an outage that hit Instagram and Facebook, triggering chaos among social media users across the globe, even though it lasted only a couple of hours. But this was not the first such blackout to hit a social media platform as others such as Twitter have also crashed in the past. Before social media was shaken up by such technical disasters, software used by firms across the globe was vulnerable to glitches causing massive losses. The disasters can be attributed to several bugs, misinterpretation of a product's specification, or ambiguities. Here are times when technological disasters rocked the corporate world.

1. Nest Thermostat freeze

This software update for the Nest's smart thermostat, which is owned by Google, malfunctioned and left the users in a tizzy. When it went wrong, the battery was forced out of the unit which resulted in the drop of temperature. As a result, consumers were unable to heat their homes or use any of the facilities. "We are aware of a software bug impacting some Nest Thermostat owners. In some cases, this may cause the device to respond slowly or become unresponsive." Nest had said in a statement, per BBC.

2. The Yahoo Breach

In 2016, Yahoo confirmed a breach of data that comprised 500 million certificates dating back four years. It is one of the biggest credential leaks that was reported that year. The company later claimed that the problem was sponsored by the state, where one individual carried out the whole hack on behalf of the government. Yahoo later advised everyone to update their passwords and usernames. The company assured everyone that their bank account details were not compromised as a part of this breach of data. Some details that were compromised include names, email addresses, telephone numbers, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers, and more.

3. The Morris Worm, November 1988

It was one of the first viruses ever inserted into a computer system, spread through thousands of machines, and crashed systems by causing coding errors. In no time, the news made the headlines. The disaster was severe and washing it cost close to $100 million at the time. This worm was designed to exploit weak passwords and networks which needed no password to be accessed. The worm started to be referred to as the "Great Worm" due to the devastating effect it had on the internet in the year 1998.

4. Bug used to release prisoners

Imagine a software bug leading to the miscalculation of the sentence, leading to sentence reduction. Yes, this did actually happen in Washington and the governor back then said, "This problem was allowed to continue for 13 years is deeply disappointing to me, totally unacceptable and, frankly, maddening." The Washington Department of Corrections added that it was made aware of the problem. Fortunately, local police were assigned to bring all the prisoners back and many of them were sent back to cell within a week of the release.

5. FDIV Pentium Bug, November 1994 

In the year 1994, tech firm Pentium, which was the leading maker of CPUs, found that their chip was failing to perform math. They later found that no matter the input they were putting in the result was always the same. Thankfully, the company was able to find the issue at an early stage and resolve it before it catapulted into a bigger problem. The issue was that if the defective math co-processor (which is known as the floating-point machine) had access to any of these cells, it would show zero answers instead of the real result. 

6. HSBC’s massive IT outages

Apart from being dragged into money laundering scams among other controversies, HSBC experienced a huge IT disaster back in January 2016 and millions of bank customers were barred from accessing online accounts. The bank took close to two days to return to operations. Customers reported that they were unable to access HSBC online via the bank's app. However, the bank blamed the outage on a DDoS attack. The bank's customers faced difficulties as it was the last Friday of the month and was many people's payday. 

7. Bitcoin node crash, April 2017

Not long after the surge of 2016 that made a lot of investors billionaires overnight, the largest digital currency Bitcoin crashed due to a storage leak in 2017. The software bug also resulted in duplication of effort. This was also the year when Bitcoin fell below $11,000, a fall of 45% from its peak. While most bitcoin owners do support a rise in block sizes, the fact that the currency is extremely volatile and susceptible to software bugs cannot be ignored. The fact that software bugs are almost impossible to eliminate 100% is concerning but one can rest easy thinking that most of these bugs are harmless and only some pose a threat to the entire blockchain.

8. Mariner 1 $135 million software bug, July 1962

In 1962, a minor software bug let Mariner kill 1 spacecraft even before it could finish its task on Venus. Just moments before the satellite could take off, the onboard antenna failed, which then compromised the spacecraft's steering radar backup system. However, it was later found that there were slight errors in the guidance system program that contributed to this costly loss. It was reported that it cost around $80 million to manufacture. In simple words, just a little omission of a hyphen-shaped symbol from the guidance program caused the rocket to go off-trajectory.

9. The Mars Climate Orbiter, September 1999

In December 1999, NASA launched the Mars Climate Orbiter to research climate change, the software team created the production of non-SI units rather than metric units that converted the units. This led to the orbiter being restricted by its thrusters. Sadly, the orbiter reached the Martian atmosphere at the wrong angle as opposed to what it was supposed to do. 

10. WannaCry ransomware attack, May 2017

The WannaCry ransomware attack was a global phenomenon that happened in May 2018. This attack spread through computers operating Microsoft Windows. During this, the user's files were all held hostage, and a Bitcoin ransom was demanded for their return. This became extremely famous and in most of the attacks, the attackers asked for ransom in Bitcoin. The virus spread heavily during that year and almost everybody was warned as most of the population on earth still uses Microsoft Windows. Back then, the United States had blamed North Korea for these attacks.