BJK Research

BugBlog's Bug of the Month

Every month the BugBlog picks its Bug of the Month, representing the most significant bug found in the past month. Sometimes, the bug will be the one which could potentially cause the most damage; sometimes it will be the bug which affects the most users. And sometimes, it will be the bug that is just the most interesting bug. This bug will be selected either from the free Bug of the Day, or from the subscription-only BugBlog Plus.

This month the Bug of the Month goes to the US Congress. While there may be ample reasons to criticize Congress, in this particular case it was for the relatively rapid change-over to new dates for Daylight Savings Time. That's meant that software manufacturer's have had to hustle out fixes for software that tracks the "Spring Ahead, Fall Back" days. Some of the items in the BugBlog or BugBlog Plus this month that covered these patches include:

Apple says that most of the Daylight Savings Time rule changes for the US and Canada are already in Mac OS X 10.4.5 and later. If you have questions about earlier versions of Mac OS X, see http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305056.

Apple says that if you are using Mac OS X 10.0.x through 10.2.8, you will need to adjust your computer's clock manually when Daylight Savings Time comes. These older versions of OS X apparently won't get a patch to adjust for the "spring ahead" dates.

If you administer an IBM WebSphere Portal Mail and World Clock server, and you aren't sure yet what you need to do for the new Daylight Savings Time switchover, see http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21248958.

If you are running IBM Lotus Notes or Domino, you will need to make some adjustments due to the change in Daylight Savings Time implementation. Do nothing, and your appointments from March 12 through March 31 may be an hour late. See http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=463&uid=swg21247972 for links to fix information.

Daylight Savings Time starts earlier this year. Any software, such as your operating system, that automatically does the "spring ahead, fall back" may not be able to handle the change. Microsoft has a February 2007 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows that will make the adjustment. Follow the link to the patch for your version of Windows at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931836.

Microsoft has a Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft Office Outlook that will configure Outlook for the changes in Daylight Savings Time. Read the extensive discussion of this tool, as well as some Registry edits that need to be made, at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931667.

If you apply the Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft Office Outlook, it will not change any recurring calendar items in Outlook Web Access. Microsoft says that creators of those repeating items will have to manually update them.

If you maintain any Java applications that may be affected by the change in Daylight Savings Time in the US and Canada, Sun Microsystems has a paper discussing some of the ramifications. Read it at http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Intl/USDST/.

So for triggering these patches (and for making me revert to getting up in the morning in pitch darkness for another couple of weeks) the US Congress wins their first Bug of the Month award.

Previous Bugs of the Month

February 2007: Adobe Acrobat and Reader

January 2007: Microsoft Word Zero-Day Vulnerabilities

December 2006: MIcrosoft XML ActiveX Control Bug

November 2006: Microsoft ActiveX Bug

October 2006: Microsoft VML Bug

September 2006: Sony Batteries

August 2006: Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage

July 2006: Yahoo! Mail

June 2006: Symantec Enterprise AV

May 2006: Microsoft Wins Special Lifetime Achievement Bug Award

April 2006: Adobe Macromedia Flash Player

March 2006: Microsoft Windows Media Player

Feb 2006: Apple QuickTime

Jan 2006: Microsoft WMF Bug

Dec 2005: Sony's Secret DRM Scheme Leaves Users Exposed

November 2005: Four Separate Bugs Leave Windows Open to Takeover

October 2005: Acrobat Screws Up MS Word

September 2005: Apple Security Update Breaks 64-bit Apps

August 2005: Cisco IOS Vulnerable to IPv6 bug

July 2005: RealNetworks Fixes Four Bugs in Their Media Player

June 2005: Flawed Rollout for Netscape 8

May 2005: TCP/IP Fix for Windows

April 2005: Denial of Service against Symantec Norton AntiVirus

March 2005: IDN Spoofing Bug

February 2005: Windows Animated Cursor Bug

January 2005: Windows Firewall Problems with Dial-up connections

The Bug of the Month is also posted at Blogcritics.org