Skip to main content

Sneak attack from feline friend wipes US government server with cat-astrophic impact — human technician cat-egorically denies involvement

Working from home has its perils, but spare a thought for a technician at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, whose cat allegedly deleted an entire server cluster – leading to a four-hour outage last month.

The outage apparently happened while the technician was reviewing how a server cluster was configured, according to the Register.

What they assumed was their feline friend turned foe, leaping onto the keyboard – unprompted – and accidentally wiping out the server, according to the agency’s CIO, Kurt DelBene, telling participants in a video conferencing call.

Shroedinger’s cat-astrophe

“This is why I have a dog,” DelBene, who is also assistant secretary for information and technology, was reported as saying.

There hasn’t yet been any official confirmation that a cat, indeed, had caused the outage – but the government did confirm an outage had happened.

"On September 13, 2023 the Kansas City VAMC [Veterans Affairs Medical Center] experienced an issue with image transfer within Vista due to an inadvertent deletion of server profiles,” the agency said, according to the publication. 

“The issue was quickly identified and the system restored within four hours. There have been no further issues or direct impacts to veterans from this incident."

When the Register pushed back, asking the Department of Veteran Affairs’ press secretary to confirm whether or not the cat was involved, they declined to comment. 

While this is certainly a bizarre outage, the technician in question will, hopefully, get some respite from knowing he’s not alone. 

This isn’t the first cat-related IT incident, after all, and is simply the latest in a string of bizarre outages recorded over the years. Level 3 Communications, for example, once attributed 17% of its fiber cuts to squirrels.   

More from TechRadar Pro



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TechRadar's Year in Review: AI revolution, smartphone evolution, and visions of the future

If I had to sum up 2023 in one word it would be AI. Okay, technically that’s two initials, but let’s not quibble – because there’s no doubt that it provided the year in tech with its main story arc. Artificial intelligence was everywhere this year, as every company in the world gawped at the massive impact of ChatGPT, and decided they wanted to jump aboard that bandwagon. You could barely move for new chatbots, new image generators, and new AI-enhanced features in every device released in 2023. And there’s no sign of that changing in 2024; in fact, we expect it to be an even bigger deal. Elsewhere, phones and laptops did much the same as they had the previous year – well, except where they had new AI-enhanced features – so it was in the virtual reality space where bigger changes were afoot. If the Meta Quest 3 was impressive then the Apple Vision Pro looks to be genuinely game-changing, and we can’t wait to see what impact it has in the next 12 months. Of course we also saw plenty ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Microsoft and Sony enter "binding agreement" to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation

Microsoft has announced that it has reached a "binding agreement" with Sony, pledging to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation following the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.  With Microsoft having won its anti-trust case with the US Federal Trade Commission , its planned acquisition of Call of Duty developers Activision Blizzard has taken a big step closer to becoming a reality. In order to alleviate the concerns of monopoly-building that got Microsoft in legal hot water to begin with, the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, announced yesterday via Tweet that it has entered into an "agreement to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation."  This agreement will no doubt come as a relief to fans concerned that Microsoft's acquisition plans might result in Call of Duty becoming an Xbox exclusive, following in the footsteps of future Bethesda releases. Since Microsoft's acquisition of Bethesda caused the studio to break its tradition of offering titles cross-platform for upcomi...
Post a Comment
Read more

This Stardew Valley-like farming sim plays at the bottom of your screen so you work and play at the same time

Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing are among some of the best choices out there if you're looking for a game to get swept up in for hours at a time. But, if you're a fan of management sims and a multitasker as well, this upcoming farming sim will likely pique your interest.  Developed by Mister Morris Games, Rusty's Retirement is an idle-farming simulation game that runs at the bottom of your gaming monitor, allowing you to focus on other tasks like working while you tend to your crops. Set to release in Q1 2024 on Steam , the idle sim puts you in the shoes of a wholesome robot as you grow crops and use them to produce clean and energy-efficient biofuel. Having gathered this "vital robot power source," you'll then need to sell your harvest to the other machine inhabitants of your settlement. This, in turn, will let you reinvest the money into expanding your farm. If you're a terrible procrastinator (like me) this might not sound like your cup of tea...
Post a Comment
Read more