Explosive Overflow: Lessons From Rocket Science

Friday, July 12, 2024: 3:00 pm (Tobin 201/202): Thirty-nine seconds after its launch towards space, rocket number 501 erupted into a scintillating fireball. No casualties were reported, other than perhaps the ego of a few software engineers. The 1996...

Friday, July 12, 2024: 3:00 pm (Tobin 201/202): Thirty-nine seconds after its launch towards space, rocket number 501 erupted into a scintillating fireball. No casualties were reported, other than perhaps the ego of a few software engineers. The 1996 inaugural flight of the Ariane 5 rocket was cut short due to a series of software design missteps. This talk will analyze these historical flaws to discuss resilience and product security, touching on the nuance of static analysis, testing, validation, legacy code, assumptions during design, and, for when things don't blow up, the unique challenge of proving that a negative event did not occur.

Mark El-Khoury