When a software developer's test program ran wild overnight, he arrived at work to find security guards waiting – and a test account mysteriously filled with a fortune.
The incident was reported in The Register's "Who, Me?" Monday morning feature, "in which we share tales of technological messes your fellow readers made."
Working at a 3G telecom startup in the early 2000s, a developer identified as "Trey" created what seemed like a simple payment testing application. The program was designed to send one-cent test transactions every five minutes, using SMS commands to trigger payments. His department head was so impressed with the demo that he requested immediate deployment – a decision that would prove costly.
Three bugs transformed the test program into an aggressive money-printing machine. Instead of processing 1-cent transactions, the program was sending $100 each time due to a misplaced decimal. When a gateway failed, the system didn't wait five minutes between attempts but fired continuously. And rather than alternating between credits and debits, it only credited the test account.
"When he arrived at work the next morning, there were some very serious faces – including a security team – waiting to greet him and find out what sort of fraud he thought he was trying to pull," The Register reports.
Fortunately, Trey's department head vouched for him, confirming it was an authorized test gone wrong. "Tragically, though, the balance of the test account was reset to zero," reports The Register.
Previously:
• Lime scooters have a software bug that causes them to hurl their riders to the ground
• Bitcoin's software had a bug that could have wrecked the cryptocurrency
• The 1947 origin story of the first computer bug is bogus
• Malware-Industrial Complex: how the trade in software bugs is weaponizing insecurity
