a Leap Second Bug


The 2012 Leap Second Bug refers to computer glitches and outages resulting from the leap second that added an extra second to June 30th, 2012 in order to keep atomic clocks in line with the planet Earth. An extra second is periodically added to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in order to compensate for Earth’s inconstant speed of rotation.

A leap second was added to the Coordinated Universal Time at the end of the day on June 30th, and it contributed to numerous outages that were caused by leap second bugs in the kernel of Linux-based operating systems and also in some Java apps. Companies with servers impacted by the Leap Second Bug included Mozilla, Reddit, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Gawker, FourSquare, Yelp and several airlines running the Amadeus Altea airline reservation system.

Other companies such as Google have attempted to prevent any leap second bugs from impacting their servers by gradually adding milliseconds to their systems’ clocks prior to the officially recognized addition of a leap second.

Read Also:

  • ooVoo

    A free service that provides instant messaging, phone calling, video messages and video chatting with up to twelve other users. First released in 2007, ooVoo currently has more than 46 million registered users and is available as a platform-independent Web client as well as for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems and Google […]

  • GridGain Big Data

    An open source Java-based tool for real-time big data processing. GridGain is an alternative to Hadoop’s MapReduce that is compatible with the Hadoop Distributed File System. It offers in-memory processing for fast analysis of real-time data. The open source version can be freely downloaded or you can choose to purchase a commercially supported version. GridGrain […]

  • Video Chat

    Technology for conducting audio and video interaction in real time between users at disparate locations. Video chats are typically conducted via a computer, tablet or smartphone device (also called videophone chatting), and may involve point-to-point (or one-to-one) interaction, as in the case of FaceTime and Skype, or multipoint (or one-to-many) interaction, as in the typical […]

  • Microsoft Surface Tablet

    Surface is the name of Microsoft’s Windows 8/RT tablets that debuted in late October 2012. There are two versions of the tablet: Surface and Surface for Windows 8 Pro. Surface runs Windows RT for ARM processors and is 0.36 inches thick and weighs 676 grams. Storage options include 16GB and 32GB options with support for […]

  • Amazon Silk

    A split-architecture Web browser that taps into Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) cloud computing services to offer a faster, richer browsing experience. Amazon Silk made its debut on the Kindle Fire tablet computer, which utilizes Silk’s split browsing capabilities to take the processing load off of the Kindle Fire CPU for heavier browser processing tasks. These […]


Disclaimer: a Leap Second Bug definition / meaning should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional. All content on this website is for informational purposes only.