A glitch created long lines At Miami International Airport– January 2018

A glitch that affected the software which processes travelers resulted in massive lines and delays in the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Miami International Airport. A software update caused a four-hour Customs computer outage at the worst timing possible as it was New Year’s Day and many holiday travelers returned to the United States. Customs agents -in order to deal with at least 2000 angry passengers- accessed records through backup systems to screen travelers and process them on arrival even at a much slower rate. It was finally proved that the service disruption was not malicious in nature and it was given to the antiquated systems used at the borders together with the high travel volume that made this outdated technology unable to cope with.

A fundamental security flaw in devices made known– February 2018

Users of any kind of device worldwide were awkwardly surprised when they read the research published which actually claims that all the computer chip manufactured devices constructed within the last 20 years contain a specific kind of fundamental security flaws. These variations of flaws are named Spectre and Meltdown and seem to allow to hackers take advantage on the processor vulnerabilities and inconspicuously manipulate a common efficiency technique that speeds data processing in order to gain access at data of servers, desktops, tablets and smartphones (including passwords, cryptographic keys, personal photos, emails etc).

In other words, Meltdown and Spectre arise from features built into chips that help them run faster, and as long as software patches are available, they may affect seriously system performance. These flaws are so widespread and fundamental that researchers call them catastrophic, although Intel claims that there is no evidence that these are being used by hackers and Microsoft says that users aren’t in danger. As they are so difficult to detect and classify, software teams have to come up with something that will fix the problem by eliminating the risky optimizations. However, some systems, like browsers, already have some protection against attacks due to the initial Meltdown and Spectre patches. Intel revealed that the company faced 32 lawsuits, back in February, over the Meltdown and Spectre flaws.

Fatal crash caused by Uber vehicle – March 2018

The software that decides how an experimental self-driving Uber vehicle reacts to detected objects on the road seems to be the reason that caused the fatal crash in Arizona. It was probably faultily tuned to be less or slower reactive to objects on road probably to avoid false alarms caused by random items, like plastic bags. What happened is that the car’s sensors detected and reacted to the bicycle driver crossing the street, but the software decided not to do this right away. Some moments of total confuse among the three modules that consist the system of operating in autonomous mode cars wasted precious time that could save woman’s life.

The module that uses the predictions to determine how the vehicle should respond is the most difficult to be built and it has been the responsible one for this accident. The perception system detected the woman but classified her as an unknown object whose path could not be predicted. The self-driving system realised –just one second before the crash- that emergency braking was needed but the built-in emergency braking system had been disabled in order to prevent conflict with the self-driving system. In addition, the human safety operator who had been looking down at the self-driving system’s display screen, failed also to brake in time. The cause of the accident therefore has many elements, but is ultimately a system-design failure.

Cancer patients in danger because of IT system failure – April 2018

A 20 years old system put in danger the health and the personal information of patients at Wales' specialist cancer hospital. The IT system, which stopped being supported by Microsoft for many years now, caused delays in treatment schedule as it went down 11 times in four weeks and there have also been daily issues with it. The cancer patients’ record system used at Cardiff's Velindre Hospital was an easy target for cyber-attacks as it is outdated. One chemotherapy patient and eight radiotherapy patients faced delays in cancer treatment that caused significant stress and could have possibly worsen cancer related symptoms and outcomes. The hospital announced the coming upgrade of their software system in a total estimated time of implementation in between 18 months and 2 years.

IT failure lose TSB 12,500 customers – June 2018

A new IT system implemented at TSB left customers struggling to make transactions and see their balances. Two months after that incident, 1.9 million TSB customers left locked out of their online banking accounts and mobile apps and lost any access to their personal data as well as thousands of others received fraud alerts. The bank’s experts were unable to properly assist their clients, even though about 460 people were hired in order to handle around 100,000 complaints. The aftermath of the IT failure was losing 12,500 customers and being also a subject to up to 10,600 fraud incidents. A number of clients said they had gained access to accounts that were not their own and that the overall bank's poor communication hit customers' trust in the company.