Another aspect of Y2K that is prone to attack is embedded devices. The so-called embedded devices, that is to say, devices in the use of intelligent chips in the system, due to the low price of intelligent chips, the current embedded devices have become ubiquitous, by the production line, a large number of automated instrumentation, automobiles, elevators, alarm systems, fire detectors to the medical equipment to the telephone exchange, air conditioning, traffic lights, thermostats, etc., can be described as infiltrating into every corner of daily life. The programs applied in these equipments have often been solidified into the components, so once a product uses only two digits to indicate the year, it will trigger the Y2K problem, and to replace these chips, it is often necessary to replace the whole system, which will result in financial and operational difficulties and make solving the Y2K problem even more troublesome, and also one of the hidden dangers of not being able to solve the Y2K problem on time.
What happens to the PCs that we commonly use?
From a hardware point of view, the Y2K problem exists mainly because the microcomputer's BIOS fails to automate the transition to Y2K, which is relatively simple. Otherwise the problem will leave you scrambling and woefully out of control once it kicks in. Specifically, there is a real-time system clock in the microcomputer hardware, which relies on the microcomputer motherboard button battery as a power source and power, always keep running, so that the microcomputer in the shutdown also be able to keep the time forward. This real-time system clock time value is saved to the motherboard BIOS memory (CMOS). When the microcomputer starts, the microcomputer operating system from the BIOS that time memory to read the current time, including four-digit year and the month, day, hour, minute, second, etc., from then on, as long as the machine is not shut down, the operating system's clock will be microcomputer external power supply (no longer on the motherboard button batteries) as the power to run forward alone and saved in the microcomputer's memory (no longer in the memory of the BIOS) . The microcomputer's Y2K problem is that, although the RTC-realtime system clock uses four digits to represent the year, the first two digits of the year data (century information, such as "19", "20", etc.) are not linked to the last two digits, i.e., they are not linked to the last two digits, i.e., they are not linked to the last two digits. However, the first two digits of the year data (century information, such as "19", "20", etc.) are not connected with the last two digits, that is, when the last two digits change from "99" to "00", the first two digits can not be changed from "19" to "20" by advancing the digits. "20", so the next year after 1999 in the RTC would be 1900, thus causing the year 2000 problem.
And for the current application of the operating system (such as DOS 5.0 or above, Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98, and Linux, SCO Unix, Windows NT) clocks, the year is expressed in four digits, so there will be no year 2000 problem. However, the problem is that there are small utilities, tools or function calls that come with the operating system that can cause Y2K attacks due to incomplete year representation, but it is safe to assume that as long as you don't use these small utilities or tools, you won't have the Y2K problem. If you want to know in detail what utilities, tools, or function calls in these operating systems are Y2K-compliant, in short, for our own microcomputers, the system side of the Y2K problem is relatively simple, and the hard part should also be the huge scale of the applications on it.