Y-2038 Tool

In the year 2038, many UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems that use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) may encounter a date-related bug in the OS. The problem will occur due to overflow of a 32-bit built-in variable which is used to store time. The maximum number of seconds this variable can count is 2,147,483,647 (GMT 03:14:07, Tuesday, January 19, 2038). After this critical event, some system may revert to GMT 20:45:52, Friday, December 13, 1901 or another unpredictable time.

 

Concentrating on the Financial sectors, the two areas of attention are:

• when the application gets the time from the system
• when applications uses functions to calculate time differences between two dates in terms of seconds/ hours/ days or adding a certain number of days to a calendar date to obtain a new one

The Infosys tool consists of an investigator, which scans the tools to identify APIs that will cause problems on January 19, 2038. It then replaces these calls with corrected ones. The tool solves the problem at the application level and also suggests recommendations for handling system time.

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