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MILLENNIUM BUG Alert - Alert - Alert - Alert - Alert This is NOT a drill! This is NOT a drill!! WARNING: You are not going to enjoy this advisory. In my exchanges with friends on the Internet, I find the usual amount of worrying going on about lots of things that deserve some measure of apprehension, from house repairs, to changing jobs, and braces on the kids’ teeth. But I hear little about what, in the minds of many of us, is the biggest, most awesome, most dangerous threat we have ever faced in our collective lives. We call it the "Millennium Bug". To vastly oversimplify an extremely complex problem, let’s begin by just saying that when people began writing computer programs, forty or fifty years ago, the 21st Century seemed a long way off into the future. Building memories into computers was a difficult and expensive task back then. "Minimizing" data by the use of codes became a science. Anything that could be reduced to an abbreviation, a sign, or a symbol, was. When it came to dates, the industry protocol settled on called for a 9-digit form to identify day-date, month, and year. Printed out on the CRT, it looked like this: dd/mm/yy/. This gave us two numbers for the day's date (01 to 31), two digits for the month (01 to 12), and two digits for the year indicator (00 to 99). We wrote our program instructions in a way that told the CPU to just assume that the millennium and century identifiers (1 and 9) were written. It takes less memory that way. This inscription system worked fine, and will continue to do so, right up until midnight, December 31, 1999, Universal Coordinated Time. But then, with the next tick of the clocks in big and little computers all over the world, what is almost sure to happen next is a frightening thing to contemplate. We have named the problem the "Millennium Bug". It grows out of the fact that most of our computers don’t know anything about the 21st century. Our computers only know about the 20th Century. Hence, any year that ends with two ciphers (00) is identified in our computer firmware and software, as 20th Century dating, and the only year since computers were invented that ended with two ciphers - 00, was 1900. In view of this uniform practice of writing year identities with two digits (and "assuming" the millennium and century designation) when the computer clocks next roll over to two ciphers, the machines are going to think they are "going back" to 1900, rather than "going ahead" to 2000. Get the picture? Mankind has been complimented by designation as "a planning animal". As we shall see, however, we often fall far short of measuring up to the label we so proudly wear. Had machine manufacturers and programmers begun working on the M-B (Millennium Bug) some fifteen years ago, when hard-disk memory technology began giving us sufficient latitude to use four digits (e.g.:1998) to show millennium, century, and year, we could have avoided this cataclysmic problem. But we didn’t. You know: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Instead, we continued right on with the 2-digit year designation, and we used the additional memory to store "Dungeons & Dragons", and "Nintendo". And because we did, we are now in imminent danger of seeing the cybernetic equivalent of the Apocalypse come crashing down around our ears. Beyond individual control - Much of the stuff that has surfaced on the Internet about this concern, almost appears to have the purpose of lulling computer users into a euphoric sense of false security. Some software Sites offer things like quick tests to see if one’s PC, desktop, or laptop portable, is set up to handle the Y2K "switch". If not, some of them offer a download application to solve the problem. The download is a mini-program that tells your computer what to do at midnight, December 31, 1999. All of this is well and good. But the M-B is not about personal computers. It’s about a globally integrated and interconnected maze of systems that, at its core, is plugged into the Master Clock, at Colorado Springs, Colorado, or elsewhere, and that synchronizes almost everything that happens under human direction on this planet. It is not a passive inter-relationship, but an active one. If an integral component fails to get its time signal from its up-stream source, that component fails to function. This sinlgle computer failure multiplies systemically, geometrically, and exponentially. It may be limited to the scope of the particular "local area network" (LAN) involved. Or, via interconnects and "feeds", it may reach all the way around the planet. There is no way to predict the reach or scope of the problem, because we can only guess at the geographical parameters of the World Wide Web structure. Computers rule the world - Except for those who live in the remote corners of the world, beyond telephone lines, beyond electric power, and the other basic manifestations of civilization, the rest of us are - quite literally - operated by, and hence, at the constant mercy of computer-generated directives. In the relatively short space of fifty years, we have invented, refined, programmed, and installed an electronic super-power that rules the modern world, and most of us who populate it. Computers tell us when to go to bed and when to get up. They delivers our news and our mail. Checks our investment portfolios. Teaches us and teaches our kids. Provides instantaneous information on any imaginable topic - and from innumerable sources. Computers direct the technologies and machinery that generates our electricity. Regulate urban water supplies. Monitors the life-saving equipment in hospitals. Controls inventories in factories, stores and shops. Adjust the sequencing of city traffic signals, to accommodate to the differing traffic-flows of rush-hour or off-hour movements. Computers automate things like weather forecasting, crop-estimates, railroad traffic movements, airline ticket sales, seating, gate assignments, plane crew assignments and flight schedules. Salt-water port schedules, entry permissions to high-security buildings, Social Security payments, cross-border immigration activity. Computers even monitor the split-second performance events in our automobile engines. Computers do just about everything. Usually they do it much better than we can. There are many people who say they do not believe in God, but I’ve never heard of anyone who claims to not believe in Computers. Computers are everywhere we turn. Everywhere! Omnipresent! Indispensable, all-powerful, and far, far, beyond coherent human understanding. This, because the people who build computers and program computer systems, nets, webs and interlocks, work independently of each other. There is no Master Plan. And computer programers write their lines of code much like Mozart wrote his music. No two programmers - nor programs - work precisely the same! Nobody can provide you with a map of computer linkage in even a single metropolitan area. You can get a grid-map of electrical distribution in Chicago, in the state of Illinois, across the United States of America, or covering the entire Western Hemisphere. The telephone system is equally well charted. Detailed maps also show us where to find particular streets, hospitals, police stations, school houses and train stations. But there is no comparable orderly tracing of arrangements in the electronic webs that cross, crisscross and re-cross continents, seas, and reach into space to "shake hands" with satellites - in a mind-boggling composite that defies imagining - much less useful definition. The heart of all of this is "the clock". Galileo and his ancient contemporaries labored mightily to define time in a way common folks could understand. And they were only concerned with "real time". Now we have Daylight Saving Time. Time zones. Clock time. Artificial Time. Interstellar time. Indeed, computers are ready to give us whatever kind of time we think we need. Time does not stand still - Whatever else is happening, time goes on. In view of this, in order to be useful, our adaptations of time must be equally continuous. Which brings us up face-to-face with the Millennium Bug. In a nutshell, at midnight, December 31, 1999, the celestial time machine is going to continue right on into Century 21, with nary a twitch or hiccup. Nothing to it! It's been happening the same way for several billion years. Unnoticed, except by God. But the computerized facsimiles of the eternal time machine that we have built, do not share the endless continuum concept. As things stand right now, a lot of these computers that ordinarily serve us so well, are going to crash in bunches, dozens, and thousands. The end of 1999, will represent the end of the world, as many or most of our computers have come to know it. How this catastrophe, and the resulting chaos will affect you - personally - will depend entirely on where, how, and in what particulars, you are "plugged into" the global computer mega-network. Effects will differ locally, nationally, internationally and celestially (via satellites). The results you will experience are totally unpredictable, because noboby knows your mega-computer-configuration. Least of all, you! To do this exercise, we will begin with your own computer. Let’s assume that your computer is new enough that the M-B problem has been overcome by a software adjunct that either explains it to your CPU, or eliminates it by use of a 4-digit year code. In either case, your computer is A-Okay, and provided you are properly connected to your Server - whose computers are also upgraded to obviate the M-B., we can proceed. On the street where you live - Many of the M-B problems you will encounter will depend on how many credit cards you have, and how you use them. For example, do you buy gas at one of those self-serve places, where you put your plastic into the slot, pump the gas, sign the ticket and go on your way. Most of these systems have at least two M-B vulnerabilities. The first one is at the satellite, that runs the whole shebang. The second is in the company’s central console, that runs the station net. Unless both the satellite link and the Central Directory Unit (CDU) have overcome the M-B, you are not going to get gas. You won’t even be able to open a pump! Lots of us use and swear by ATMs (Automatic Teller Machines) planted here and there by the systems to which our banks subscribe: PLUS, Versateller, VISA, AMEX, etc. These nets are satellite-linked to the "big brain" in your bank, "wired" to the individual ATM locations, and "coppered" to other banking associates as well. This makes it possible for you to use your Chase Bank ATM card, in a Barclay’s Bank ATM - in London. England. In this kind of linkage, there are a minimum of four or five "tender spots" where, unless the M-B problem has been fixed, you aren’t going to be able to open the ATM. Beginning to get the picture? Depending on where you buy things, and how you pay, you may find yourself almost stopped out of your usual electronic behavior, because nothing seems to work. Or those things that do still work, don’t work correctly. Lots of error messages and "Try Again Later" advisories. The problem is that we are not prepared for computer failures. We NEED those computerized functions. When an ATM doesn’t work, we have no back-up. After all, nobody carries a bunch of cash in his or her pocket any more. We get cash money somewhat as we need it - out of an ATM, Same thing with the Department Store, the gas station, theater tickets, and lunch with some friends - you name it. It's all "on computer". So, if (almost certainly "when") the global computer structure shuts down because of not being able to tell what day in which year it is, what can you do to insulate yourself from the inevitable chaos that will result? Answering that question is the purpose of this essay. Out-guessing the Millennium Bug won’t be easy, but there are some things we can do to insulate ourselves from a temporary return to the Stone Age. First thing first, you have to have some cash money on hand. In your pocket! This is not going to be easily accomplished through regular ATM channels. Branch banks are computer-linked to Head Offices, which are linked to designated Clearing House operations, in turn linked to the Federal Reserve Bank in the District, that is probably linked to the office of the Controller of Currency, and the Treasury Department. Each one of these junctions is a potential trouble spot, unless the "Master Computers" at each location has been fixed to handle the M-B. My advice: Forget about ATM’s. They aren’t going to work. That your personal computer is new enough or "upgraded" to overcome the M-B makes no difference. You must have a complete, intact, properly programmed, cyber handshake with the "Big Brain", or your plastic is not going to work. Trust me on this. Is the picture getting clearer? Let’s say that a particular On-Line Banking customer has a checking account, a regular pass-book savings account, Some C.D.’s, and a VISA Credit Card Account in his Bank. All of these categories are linked to the customer’s On-Line function. He can transfer his funds, pay bills, buy more C.D.’s, and get an on-line print out of the transactions and collected balances in each account. However, accessing his accounts depends on an his having an intact Internet link, Customer I. D., and an assigned password. Unless the customer can "access" the Bank Master Computer, he can’t even check his balances. Should the Millennium Bug strike this connection, or one of its numerous intra- or inter-links, his money might as well be on the moon. Pending restoration of the cyber circuit, he can’t even FIND his money! This can prove to be at least extremely inconvenient, and perhaps disastrous. In preparation for this eventuality, I recommend holding a considerable amount of cash on hand. Sufficient at least for a month or two, without any additions from banks or other fiduciary sources. Cash money in this M-B scenario is going to be in very short supply and very great demand. Why? Because banks always have the money. Customers don’t have money. They have deposit receipts and Statements of Accounts. In the event of a M-B system crash, you are not going to be able to touch your funds until the system is repaired and put back on-line. You must plan for this eventuality. A money-panic is an ugly thing to experience. People who are deprived - and fearful of losing - their money, are angry - and dangerous. You do not want to join these mobs in the streets. Travelers Checks are another form in which to hold reserve funds. In the clutch, however, Travelers Checks are not going to be as useful as cash money, because T-C’s can not be passed and re-passed in trade. For this reason, I would expect that in the event, bills may carry substantial premiums in the money-exchange market, while Travelers Checks will probably be discounted. Funds held in brokerage accounts, as margin deposits against open market trades, free balances, escrow, etc., will be equally out of reach until the end of the crisis, and restoration of integrated computer functions. If you do not wish to drain these accounts and close them entirely, you might consider reducing the balances in them by having your broker/banker write Cashier’s Checks to you, to be held during the crisis, then re-deposited whenever you feel secure in doing so. Riding out the storm - Riots of the kind likely to be precipitated by breakdown of the computer-based economic system will probably be largely limited to the cities. This is to say that Wall Street in New York City, or where LaSalle Street joins into Randolph, in the middle of the Chicago Financial District, will not going to be a good places to be while this scenario is playing itself out. Small towns or mountain cabins will offer much more tranquility and personal safety. You might as well take a vacation, while the "money panic" fills the city streets with frightened and angry people since, there won’t be much else going on in any case. An instructive parallel was recently seen in the failure of ComSat-4. This satellite lost its "instruction" link, drifted out of its proper geo-stationary position, and millions of people on earth who wear "beepers" every day of their lives were suddenly out of touch with their companies, spouses, brokers and bookies. Great consternation prevailed. This kind of catastrophe had never happened before. In truth it couldn’t have happened before, because we have never been so computer-dependent before. To get some idea of the potentials for global chaos that bears down on us in the form of the Millennium Bug, carry the ComSat-4 breakdown to the 10th power. Compared to the impact of the Millennium Bug, the "Beeper" problem, as it was called, was a minor nuisance. It took less than a week to switch the subscribers to another satellite, and business as usual gradually resumed. But "beeper" subscribers will never forget it. Repairing the Millennium Bug breakdowns in service will proceed much more slowly. Some recognized authorities tell me that it will likely take up to two years for all of the M-B-related network "glitches" to be re-programmed and returned to function. If so, nobody is in a position to predict the social and economic impact involved - nor the secondary effects of such a cataclysm on international, national, state, local and even family structures. This kind of stress has never been experienced previously. There is no way to simulate - or imagine - such a breakdown in crucial business systems and social connections. Imposition of Martial law is a certainty within the parameters of this scenario. However, there has to be serious doubt about the adequacy of existing forces to maintain even a semblance of order in the face of such incitement to global disorder and public outrage. Historic opportunity for cyber- criminals - Everything discussed to date is presented as unavoidable fallout from a unprecedented failure of computer systems and linking technology, upon which the entire world depends for conduct of all manner of governmental, public, and private affairs. These activities run the gamut from news-reporting to international money transfers, from espionage reports to private correspondence, from weather reports to troop deployment. If even a small part of the potential problems tied into the Millennium Bug occur, there will be few inhabitants of the so-called industrialized world who will escape unscathed. There is another facet to this highly predictable catastrophe. Consider: Forecasting the future is easily the chanciest activity known to adventurous individuals, whether the event contemplated is a horse-race, or an earthquake. Reading the future is an activity that successfully eludes most of us, with or without a crystal ball. But the very predictability of the Millennium Bug event plays into the larcenous hands of the criminally inclined among us. Lots of buildings are deliberately torched each year, for the purpose of destroying records of account in a business that is being "liquidated" in the flames for the benefit of the owner. Perhaps the fire is to facilitate the collection of insurance, or defraud creditors, or both. Whatever the illegal objective, the central device is - more often than not - to destroy the company records. The perpetrator of this kind of crime wants to be sure there is no "paper trail" for suspicious investigators to follow in locating the guilty parties. For a single example, insurance fraud has always been one of the most difficult crimes to arrange because, fire or not, "paper" records exist in hundreds or thousands of locations - in the files of suppliers, customers, banks, etc. Not so with computerized commerce. Evangelists for the computer transition hold forth loudly and long about the tremendous benefits to be realized via the "paperless society". They may be right, in the long run, but there is also a short-term downside to the "paperless" equation. Anyone who works with computers knows that destroying every trace of a document in a computer is both quick and easy - either intentionally, or by accidentally hitting a wrong key, or experiencing a spontaneous system "crash" Keep this fact in mind, as we explore the dark side of the Millennium Bug. Coordinating rip-offs with the Millennium Bug Charles H. Keating and Michael Millken both went to jail for defrauding people and institutions of billions of dollars. They got caught up in their own paper-trails, and government prosecutors did the rest. You may remember that Keating used a rigged Savings & Loan for his "white collar" crimes. Michael Millken was known as "The Junk-Bond King." His royal title didn’t keep him from paying huge restitution to his victims, going to prison, and being barred from the securities business for life. Paper is usually what trips up a commercial crook. In an old-fashioned conventional business system, paper is flying in every direction. Customers have written receipts and Delivery notices. Vendors have purchase orders, invoice copies, payment receipts, cancelled checks and inventory control lists. Paper, paper, paper! In our recently-invented "paperless business system", nobody really needs paper records. Orders are placed via computer. Performance is acknowledged by computer. Payments are handled by electronic transfer. The records of these successive steps are transmitted over computer networks, and they are inscribed in the proper files, in a computer memory. You can print out paper copies of those documents whenever you wish. But why clutter up one’s office with a bunch of steel file cabinets and paper souvenirs of business already transacted, paid for and forgotten? This line of reasoning is probably right, reasonable and perfectly justified, as long as nothing goes wrong with the computer memory banks in which the transaction records have been files. However, should something happen to destroy those electronic records, retrieval or regeneration of them may be extremely difficult - or even impossible. At the present time, Several Swiss banks are is considerable hot-water with depositors and foreign authorities for alleged criminal activities in connection with gold stolen from Holocaust victims. Their situation is rendered much worse than it might be, because the charges against the banks are being structured from the banks’ own paper records. If, instead of paper accounting books, journals and ledgers, all of these records were in computer memories, perhaps a fortunate "crash" would have long since rendered these "paper trails" of institutional wrongdoing non-existent. An in-house "crash" is serious, but not fatal. A global "crash" of the kind being contemplated in connection with the Millennium Bug, is on a totally different order of magnitude. Consider this scenario: Whenever, and to whatever extent the computer networks are immobilized, the banks, brokerage houses, Savings & Loans and other fiduciary institutions will be "caught" holding most of the world’s money. Customers do not hold cash. We hold deposit slips, due-bills, Certificates of Deposit, plastic credit cards, and other surrogate "evidence" of our money holdings. But our money is inside somebody’s else’s safe. Remember this! The notion is that, whenever we are moved to do so, prompted by either necessity or whim, we can lay down some, part, or all of these surrogate documents, Certificates of Deposit, pass-books, Statements of Account, Credit Cards. etc., and immediately receive in hand, some or all of our money from the institution that has been holding it in safekeeping for us. Sometimes a few days or a month or two waiting period is invoked, depending on the amounts involved. Generally speaking, however, our money is ours, and is available to us upon demand. So far, so good, in spite of the fact that a lot of people who have been caught in a bank "run", or a bank failure know better, from bitter experience. However, "institutions of trust", as they habitually and hypocritically call themselves, are not universally trustworthy. "Engineered" bankruptcies of Savings & Loans cost their trusting customers huge amounts of money. The full extent of the fraud involved in that historic debacle will never be known. There is no way to measure criminality not uncovered and prosecuted. It is estimated that the government bailout of Savings & Loan losses will add up to between $400 and $500 billion dollars, over a period of 30 to 40 years. Many of the defrauded depositors will never recapture 100% of the money they lost in scams like that of Charles S. Keating. Banks, Credit Unions and their multifarious imitators make a business out of holding other people’s money. The reliability of these "money tanks" is subject to considerable depositor suspicion, based on history alone. As Will Rogers is supposed to have said, "I have no trouble trusting a banker, unless he has my money locked up in his safe." When one of these "institutions of trust" goes broke - and they do - the institution loses its reputation, if any. It’s the customers who lose their money. Reading the future - Bankruptcies, as noted earlier, starts lots of fires. Entire buildings burn to the ground, when it’s just the company books the crooks want to get rid of. Selectively burning - or shredding - the books of account, would look much too suspicious. And even if the books burned to pure ashes, there are too many other places for insurance investigators and IRS gum-shoes to start picking up the paper-trail. The Millennium Bug labors under no such handicap. When the M-B crash comes, to whatever extent it wipes out computer records and links, the record destruction will be virtually irretrievable. Or if the lost data proves to be recoverable and subject to regeneration, the very best scenario tells us that this record restoration job will take many years to do. In the meantime, the banks, brokerage offices, Credit Unions and Savings & Loans will have your money - and you will have a passbook or a deposit slip. Beginning to see the larger picture? - As this material is being written, it is an absolute certainty that investment crooks of every stripe and kind are making meticulous plans for this epic event - when the Millennium Bug shuts down the world’s financial system. Opportunities like this only come once in ana imaginative criminal's lifetime. Indeed this kind of global tragedy could only happen to a gullible world, that would trust its very economic life to the questionable mercies of faceless people and inscrutable machines that hardly anyone understands. Never before has such a universal exercise in limitless faith taken place. And, you can be sure, provided we can survive this one, we will never let it happen again. So what’s next? - Nobody really knows. The people who should have the answers aren’t talking. Knowledgeable computer industry people tell us that there is no way the required programming fixes can me made with the time left to us. As this is being written, there is only 1 year, 210 days, 19 hours and 43 seconds until January 1, 2000, (UTC). During this relatively short period of time, thee are BILLIONS of lines of code to be written, installed and tested. Considering the total number of qualified programmers available, and the amount of work to be done within this finite period of time remaining to us, you can be sure we are going to be late. The only question is How Late? Some experts say two years. Other experts say longer. Still others say this time estimate is excessive. The brightest-eyed optimists put their estimates between six months and a year to get our computer nets back to work. But all of this nit-picking is really quite beside the point. If we are five-seconds late, this will be plenty of time in which to trigger the most awesome, incomprehensible, unmanageable, earth-shaking cataclysm humanity has ever had to cope with. Somebody has compared the Millennium Bug "crash" with the world coming to an end. In my opinion, it could be worse than the world coming to an end. When the Millennium Bug wreaks its havoc, the world won’t end. But most of the tools by which the world’s activities are inter-related, coordinated and managed will suddenly cease to function. Instead of universal death, it may well be universal chaos. My question: Which would you prefer? ------------E N D----------- Copyright © Lorenzo Dee Belveal Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico All Rights Reserved Downloading and reprinting by permission only June 3, 1998
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