Software failure

RBS payments failure

About 6 lakh payments failed to get through the accounts of RBS overnight in June 2015, which included wages and benefits. Bank’s chief admin officer stated it was a technology fault, and there was no further detail on the real cause.

Airbus software bug alert

In May 2015, Airbus issued an alert for urgently checking its A400M aircraft when a report detected a software bug that had caused a fatal crash earlier in Spain. Before this alert, a test flight in Seville caused the death of four Air Force crew members, and two were left injured.

Yahoo reports breach

Amongst the most recent data breaches, on September 22, 2016, Yahoo confirmed a data breach that exposed about 500 million credentials. It is considered among the largest credential leaks of 2016. The company believes that this was a state-sponsored breach, where an individual on behalf of a government executed the entire hack.

Nest thermostat freeze

Software update for the Nest ‘smart’ thermostat (owned by Google) went wrong and literally left users in the cold. When the software update went wrong, it forced the device’s batteries to drain out, leading to a temperature drop. Consequently, the customers could not heat their homes or use any amenities.

UK government’s new online farming payments system gets delayed

In March 2015, the UK government delayed the launch of a £154 million rural payments system. The system is an online service for farmers to apply for Common Agricultural Policy payments from the EU.

Nissan’s recall

For over 2 years, Nissan recalled over a million cars thanks to a software glitch in the airbag sensory detectors. Practically, the affected cars could not assess whether an adult was seated in the car’s passenger seat and consequently would not inflate the airbags in case of a crisis.