Year 2000

Security & Control
Overview | Six critical dates | Network vulnerability

Overview

"The year 2000 is not rocket science, but it is the largest project ever to be undertaken by the IT organisation. The complexity of the project is not in the solution, but rather in the size and scope of the project itself"

- Kevin Schick, Gartner Group

Six critical dates

01/01/99 and 09/09/99	Sometimes attached to computer files to signify the file is to be kept foever or is the master backup to which incremental changes should be added
31/12/99	Sometimes used as a "boundary marker" that will cause some systems to stop or simply revert to an earlier date. May (especially older) PC's will flip back to 1980. Some Unix systems will return to 1970.
01/01/00	The biggie. Year 0 will mean the collapse of many existing systems or, more frighteningly, a subtle change in teh logic paths followed when comparisos between dates are made.
29/02/00	Which many systems will treat as 01/03/00 since the determinant of a leap year - that the year is divisible by 4 - fails to work correctly. (0/4 = 0!)
31/12/00	Again, some systems won't be expecting a 366th day for an apparent non-leap year.

Ref: Palmer, G (1997, Sep/Oct)

Network vulnerability

Motherboard

The PC real-time clock may not go from 1999 to 2000, so the BIOS will not return the correct time to the Operating system.

Operating system

Some Operating systems and Network operating systems have trouble working with dates after 1999.
Eg. File manager in Win 3.1 and Netware 3.12.

Applications

Many applications interpret two-digit years differently. In addition some won't work after 1999.

User data

Spreadsheets such as Lotus 1-2-3 can be built with two-digit years.

Debacle on the desktop (1997, Dec 8)