Blessed Y2K22, Who Stopped the Mail at New Year

Patron of Exchange servers, dates stored as numbers, and everyone who spends New Year restarting services.

Life

At midnight on 1 January 2022 on-premises Microsoft Exchange servers stopped delivering mail: the FIP-FS antimalware engine versioned its updates with a date in the yyyyMMddHHmm format, and the number 2201010001 exceeded the maximum of a signed 32-bit integer. No attackers, no exploit: just a calendar overflow that turned the admins' New Year's night into overtime.

Prayer

O Blessed Y2K22, who trips not over an enemy but over a number too large, let our dates stay within their integers. Amen.

How to celebrate

Celebrated by applying Microsoft's emergency fix and toasting the signed 32 bits that are never quite enough.

New year, old overflow.