It's Y2K Revisited as GPS Reset May Send Your Devices Haywire

Ari Natter

Bloomber

Bloomberg

April 6, 2019

(Bloomberg) -- Meet the Y2K-bug’s little brother.

Thanks to a quirk in how Global Positioning Systems keep track of time, some devices are due to have their calendars reset at 7:59 p.m. EDT on Saturday. This echoes the hysteria -- mostly overhyped -- over global computers systems that gripped the world when the calendar was about to click over from 1999 to 2000.

Fortunately, the glitch only affects older GPS systems or ones that haven’t been updated, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security says it isn’t expecting wide-scale disruptions. But they’ve still been warning that utilities, financial systems, airlines and telecommunication systems could be affected by the problem.

“A nanosecond error in GPS Time can equate to one foot of position (ranging) error,” the department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a memo warning about the problem.

GPS Time: 1024 Weeks

The issue is caused by the “1024 week number rollover.” GPS systems keep track of time by counting weeks, but only have enough data to keep track of 1,024 of them before they reset to Jan. 6, 1980, when the system first went online.The last time that happened was in August 1999 when GPS was used a lot less for everything from flying planes to mapping the best driving routes to locating lost pets.

The next reset occurs tonight.

The navigation technology manufacturer TomTom NV told users “there’s no need to worry” if you frequently update your device, but said those who don’t may find “navigation impossible” among other problems.

Little Worry

Garmin LTD said its testing has shown the “vast majority” of its GPS devices will handle the rollover without issue, and those that are affected will see an incorrect date and time displayed but “the positioning accuracy will not be affected.”

But other industries that rely on precise time could see an impact.

Edward Powers, the GPS Operations Division Chief for the United States Naval Observatory, warned in a 2017 presentation that the rollover could lead to corrupted data and system failures, with problems occurring beyond April 6.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ari Natter in Washington at anatter5@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Jon Morgan at jmorgan97@bloomberg.net, Ros Krasny, Ian Fisher

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.