A recent directive from Mark Probert, our Information Systems Manager, advised all at Geography to download the latest security updates from Microsoft Windows. Why? It’s all about bugs. According to Mark, there are continual attempts to gain unauthorized access to the Geographer servers. For example, this Sunday’s daily traffic report from the Department’s Barracuda Spam and Virus Firewall lists 11,803 instances of spam being blocked, 58 “bad recipients” being blocked, and 4 viruses being blocked and 156 being quarantined. While some of these probes (the “bad recipients”) may be simply an attempt to “hack” into our system for the heck of it, the attempts to send viruses constitute malicious efforts to bypass access controls in order to damage the system or to obtain unauthorized privileges or information.
Most bugs are simply flaws in a computer program’s source code or design that impede its functionality and do little more than slow your computer down. However, security bugs can cause your system to crash or, worse, enable unauthorized access to the data on your computer, including such things as your e-mail address book—which can result in you inadvertently spreading the bug via e-mail to your friends. A 2002 study commissioned by the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that “software bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and so detrimental that they cost the US economy an estimated $59 billion annually, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product.”
The term “bug,” as a reference to generic glitches, predates computers: “It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise — this thing gives out and [it is] then that ‘Bugs’ — as such little faults and difficulties are called — show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached” (Thomas Edison, 1878).
But back to the title of this article. The origin of the term “bug,” at least in relation to computers, goes back to the cause of a malfunction in an early electromechanical computer in the Harvard Computation Laboratory in 1947. Operators traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. The bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book with the notation “First actual case of bug being found.” Now you know why Mark keeps bugging us about security updates…
Editor’s note: Most of this article is simply a synopsis of the Wikipedia article, “Software Bug”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug. Some fascinating details about bugs in relation to NASA’s space shuttle can be found at and at http://klabs.org/DEI/Processor/shuttle/garman_bug_81.pdf (thanks to Mark Probert for providing these links).
“Mark but this flea, and mark in this,/ How little that which thou deniest me is;/ It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,/ And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.” John Dunne (1572-1632), “The Flea” (first stanza).
Article by Bill Norrinton
A recent directive from Mark Probert, our Information Systems Manager, advised all at Geography to download the latest security updates from Microsoft Windows. Why? It’s all about bugs. According to Mark, there are continual attempts to gain unauthorized access to the Geographer servers (literally, hundreds per day). While many of these attacks may be simply an attempt to “hack” into our system for the heck of it, a lot of them are malicious attempts to bypass access controls in order to obtain unauthorized privileges or information. This is done by introducing a security bug (or computer virus, also commonly, but inaccurately, referred to as a bug).
Most bugs are simply flaws in a computer program’s source code or design that impede its functionality and do little more than slow your computer down. However, more serious bugs can cause your system to crash or, worse, enable unauthorized access to the data on your computer, including such things as your e-mail address book—which can result in you inadvertently spreading the bug via e-mail to your friends. Worse still, a 2002 study commissioned by the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that “software bugs, or errors, are so prevalent and so detrimental that they cost the US economy an estimated $59 billion annually, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product.”
The term “bug,” as a reference to engineering glitches, predates computers: “It has been just so in all of my inventions. The first step is an intuition, and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise — this thing gives out and [it is] then that ‘Bugs’ — as such little faults and difficulties are called — show themselves and months of intense watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success or failure is certainly reached” (Thomas Edison, 1878).
But back to the title of this article. The origin of the term “bug,” at least in relation to computers, goes back to the cause of a malfunction in an early electromechanical computer in the Harvard Computation Laboratory in 1947. Operators traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay. The bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book with the notation “First actual case of bug being found.” Now you know why Mark keeps bugging us about security updates…
Editor’s note: Most of this article is simply a synopsis of the Wikipedia article, “Software Bug”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug.
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
John Dunne (1572-1632), “The Flea” (first stanza) the Barracuda Spam & Virus Firewall
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