SonicWall acknowledged on January 7th that the Y2K22 bug had affected some of its Email Security and firewall solutions, causing message log updates and junk box failures beginning January 1st, 2022. According to the organization, email users and administrators on affected systems would no longer be able to access the junk box or un-junk newly received emails. They will also be unable to trace incoming/outgoing emails using the message logs because they will no longer be updated.
SonicWall, a private firm based in Silicon Valley that was a Dell subsidiary from 2012 to 2016, produces a variety of Internet equipment aimed largely at content restriction and network security. These include network firewalls, unified threat management (UTM), virtual private networks (VPNs), and email anti-spam devices.
SonicWall issued updates to North American and European instances of Hosted Email Security, the company's cloud email security service, on January 2nd. It also issued updates for its on-premises Email Security Appliance (ES 10.0.15) for customers that use firewalls with the Anti-Spam Junk Store feature enabled (Junk Store 7.6.9).
The server administration community has dubbed this bug "Y2K22" because to its resemblance to the infamous Y2K bug, a date-related bug that was feared to cause numerous computer systems, and possibly the whole world economy, to crash at the turn of the century. FIP-FS is a malware-scanning engine built into Microsoft Exchange 2016 and 2019 servers. This engine employs a signature file that holds dates as 32-bit integers. The most significant integer that can be stored in 32 bits is 2147483647.
Everything was acceptable for the dates in 2021 because it was stamped as 211231XXXX (for 31st December). However, as of the start of the next year, January 1st, 2022, it was converted to 2201010001. When attempting to format in 32 bits, which is greater than the maximum number allowed. As a result, date/time validations on the server software would fail, resulting in emails not being sent and stacking up on servers.
Despite the fact that SonicWall has not explained what is causing the Y2K22 bug in its devices, they are not the only company affected by this problem. Honda and Acura owners began claiming that their in-car navigation systems' clocks were automatically set back 20 years, to January 1st, 2002, beginning on January 1st. According to sources, the Y2K22 bug affects nearly all older vehicle models, including the Honda Pilot, Odyssey, CRV, Ridgeline, Odyssey, and Acura MDX, RDX, CSX, and TL.
