Top Software Failures Due to Lack of Testing

The biggest software failures in history are IT outages, Ransomware attacks, including data leakages that have affected millions of customers and the world's biggest companies. Software engineering failures can happen due to ambiguities, bugs, misinterpretation of the specification that the product/software/application is supposed to meet, unexpected use of the software & development tools, weakness in writing code, carelessness, insufficient testing, and other unforeseen issues.

The use of IT (Information Technology) has become pervasive in the organization’s management. Whether it is the public sector or private sector, it is impossible to work without technology in an organization. One of the main aspects of the all-consuming influence of Information Technology is software. Software is the collective term utilized to explain the set of program instructions that have transformed the computer into a formidable extension of the human ability to store and process a considerable amount of data.

The increasing pressures of the information economy help companies become more productive and efficient in the marketplace. It also allows the organizations to achieve strategic and competitive advantage through the use of the software. Thus, the software has come to be the essential component of any organization to stay ahead in the competition of the information economy. Companies today speed up their development processes to satisfy their information and computing needs. Even after giving the best efforts and having well-designed plans in the organizations, many software projects end up as failures.

The adoption of CI (Continuous Integration) is on the rise; computer engineering departments have zero-tolerance to any failed software functionalities, with the development process costing billions to enterprise organizations annually. 

In this blog, we come up with some of the recent top software failure examples with well-known brands that have started taking security precautions such as rigorous software testing to protect their businesses from such major software failures that can prove to be a catastrophe or potential disasters.

Biggest Software Failure Examples in History

• Slack And Its Public DM Feature 

Slack is one of the most widely used productivity tools for businesses that come from the house of Salesforce and is known for connecting people. Nevertheless, even if slack comes from a popular brand, even the most capable software is likely to witness failures at times.  

The software recently flawed into a feature that allowed sending DMs without the other user accepting the request. In simple words, it allowed anyone to slip into your DMs without even your permission. This made users of slack complain since the app offered no option to turn off such texts and causing unwanted messages to slip into the inbox.  

This was the first time ever Slack had to witness such criticism with its development and add-ons made to the product. However, Slack did work on updates at the beginning of 2022 that affected the user experience such as the removal of users’ ability to use the term “Slack” in their names. Also, there was an incident where Slack deleted all the shared channels of the users along with their chat history, offending users, and falling into the list of biggest software failure examples ever.   

• T-Mobile & Data Breach 

If it comes to some of the biggest cybersecurity failures, T-Mobile is also one of the biggest software failure examples of history that shook the industry in 2022, it would definitely be a data breach that happened at T-Mobile that risked the personal data of 50 million users from the company server. The hackers even got access to internal data of the company relating to the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint, a proposition that was likely to be announced much later after the hack due to the controversies surrounding it.  

Coming back to the hack attempt, it happened through the stolen credentials of an employee who worked at an unnamed vendor of T-Mobile's customer support department. Later, the FBI was informed of the attempt made to carry out the investigation while T-Mobile did not disclose any details of the incident with no statement given on similar breaches that might occur in the future.

• Amazon Partner Juspay Shamed Online - Data Breach Case

Juspay, the Bengaluru-based start-up in India, has a partnership with the most popular online retailers such as Amazon, MakeMyTrip, Swiggy, FreeCharge, Yatra, Snapdeal, and BookMyShow. According to TOI reports, the payment services provider Juspay dumped online due to the data breach case that took place in August 2020.

Security researcher Rajshekhar Rajaharia found data of 10 crore Indian credit-card holders from a breach that happened on a Juspay server on Aug. 18. The data involved sensitive information of the card holders like the name, bank name, and the mobile number of customers whose payment information went through the service of this company, tweeted by Rajaharia on Jan 3, 2021, with an edited screenshot of some of the data.

Juspay reacted quickly to the incident, terminated the server used in the attack, stopped the attack, and sealed its entry point, as per the statement.

“On the same day, a system audit was conducted to ensure the whole category is safe from such issues, the company stated. “Our merchants got information of the cyberattack on the same day, and we coordinated with them to take different precautionary measures to safeguard information.”

However, Juspay claimed that the data breach did not contain a great deal of sensitive and transactional data and mostly contained masked card data displayed on merchant websites; cybersecurity officials sparked worries about the need for tighter data protection laws in the country to prevent such software engineering failures and attempt to breaches, while ensuring that news about such attacks is transmitted to the relevant authorities on time.

• Yahoo Confirmation on Massive Data Breach

It is one of the recent software failures confirmed by Yahoo itself on September 22, 2016. Yahoo claimed that a copy of specific user account information was stolen from the organization’s network. The account information may have involved email addresses, names, dates of birth, telephone numbers, hashed passwords, and in most cases, unencrypted and encrypted security questions and answers. The investigation proposed that stolen information didn’t contain payment card data, unprotected passwords, and bank account information. Yahoo believes that information associated with about 500 million user accounts was stolen.

Yahoo encouraged its users to change the security questions and answers and passwords from any other accounts if they used similar information. The company gave a reminder to its users to avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails. Reviewing your accounts for suspicious activity and don’t sharing your personal information when asking to a web page were other concerns of the company.

  Check Out Here - What Role Do Software Testing Services Play In Cyber Security?

• Memory Failure - Tesla Recalls 135,000 Vehicles

Tesla will recall a maximum of 135,000 cars to fix computer memory issues in the touchscreen that could cause a loss of some features notified by the electric car manufacturer to the U.S NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration).

The manufacturer said that the touchscreen’s flash memory reaches the end of its lifespan. It can trigger failures of the software components of the centre monitor and can unintentionally lead to the loss of external turn signal lighting, rearview camera display, and defog/defrost control settings.

Explore Our - Transport and Logistics Testing Services

• Super Buggy Spacecraft Launch

Software failure types are different for sure, but Boeing's glitchy software errors are hard to ignore. Boeing's disastrous software not only killed 346 people but also destroyed the 737 max aircraft.

Its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft proved successful, but due to the technical coding errors in the company’s software, the initiative of investigating the software malfunction was taken by NASA.

• Software Bug in Vaccine Scheduling System

While addressing the glitches in New Jersey's hospital vaccine scheduling system, Virtual Health found 10 to 11K duplicate appointments.

The team of 200 persons made over 10,400 phone calls to fix the issue and then identified that around 70% of appointments were duplicates. The software bug mostly affected the seniors, a virtual spokesperson reported to hospital staff.

• Software Fault was a Cause of Airbus A400M plane crash

In May 2015, Airbus got scared when he reported a software bug in its A400M aircraft. The company immediately took action to fix the issue, which was a fatal crash that happened in Spain.

Before this action, a test flight in Seville already announced the injury of two people, and four air force crew members died in this incident.

• Security Issues in Zoom App

One of the noteworthy software failures in 2020 was Zoom App. Due to the amid lockdown and social distancing, many companies started to give an online education and manage their work through video conferencing zoom app.

The Zoom app was recently pointed out by the Indian government and various other international governments. The discussion was mainly on security issues. Even the Ministry of Home Affairs gave a Red Flag to the Zoom and revealed that its video conferencing facility is not secure. After a few days, some allegations were posed by India’s Computer Emergency Response team and had raised the concern over cyberattacks. “Insecure use of the platform can allow cybercriminals to access sensitive information such as conversations and meeting details,” the government had said.

Check Risks In Software Delivery & How Testing In Production Works As Aid?

To sum it up

It is important to understand the uncertainty of the future. Therefore, any software or application made must be built on a solid foundation. Even if it is a brand that adopts third-party software, it must be made sure that the right investment must be made. Doing so could not only save you from productivity lag but even protect your business from potential incidents of business threats emerging from software errors.  

However, a good way to avoid negative publicity and angry users is to embrace early software testing. Focusing on the right balance of agile and DevOps practices in the process could not only help resist software failures but can even aid business processes for zero downtime and capital risks.  

At BugRaptors, we never let your product turn into a software testing failure example. No matter, which industry it is, we bring you a 100% guarantee on authentication, authorization, confidentiality, integrity, and availability while catering to the compliance goals surrounding your industry.  

The future is everything digital. Therefore, it becomes necessary to minimize the risk of your data loss with dedicated investment in security testing services. Think Now! 

For more information, reach us through info@bugraptors.com