Or how a simple cat was able to completely take down the computer system of a veterans medical center in the United States.
A computer failure can occur in various ways, due to human error, an attack by cybercriminals, or because your most precious feline friend jumps on the keyboard and shuts down a series of servers, as just happened in Missouri.
As reported by The Register, a technician at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, was working on a group of servers when your cat jumped on the keyboard.
This resulted in a four-hour system outage that affected image transfer across the medical center’s entire electronic filing system.
The incident occurred on September 13 and was revealed by a source who spoke to The Register who noted that he heard this story on one of the regular calls that the Department of Veterans Affairs makes to review recent computer problems.
According to the aforementioned source, one of the participants in the call confessed that his cat jumped on the keyboard and deleted the profiles from the server while he was reviewing them.
Curious about the news, The Register contacted the Department of Veterans Affairs to corroborate the information provided by the source, and while they confirmed the computer problem, they did not name any cat as being responsible.
“On September 13, 2023, the VAMC [Centro Médico de Asuntos de Veteranos] of Kansas City experienced an issue with image transfer within Vista due to an inadvertent deletion of server profiles. The issue was quickly identified and the system was restored within four hours. “There have not been any further issues or direct impacts due to this incident,” stated VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes.
They refer to an issue with image transfer within Vista, a medical center health information system technology architecture imaging system.
They comment that the problem was identified and quickly resolved in four hours, but the cat was not mentioned at any time, although they did not deny it either.
When The Register attempted to press further to acknowledge the cat’s role in this blackout, they declined to comment further.