Security News > 2022 > January > Honda cars in flashback to 2002 – “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”
Owners of Honda cars of a certain age - apparently somewhere between 10 and 16 years old - have spent the first few days of the New Year reporting a weird "Millennium bug style" problem.
Apparently, for many cars that are a decade or so old, New Year's Day 2022 was ushered in with their in-car clocks.
In case you're wondering what life was like back then, it probably won't help to be reminded that one of the top songs of the year was the unforgettable Can't Get You Out of My Head, by Aussie superpopstar Kylie Minogue.
Why just 20 years in Honda cars? Why only in certain older-but-not-too-old models? And why two decades exactly?
If the clock software is set so that it assumes it should disregard the time and date offered by the GPS unit if the year comes out earlier than 2003, in one of those "Something must have gone wrong" error situations, then at least the time displayed - but not the date! - may well correct itself as suggested by Honda when the car thinks it has once again reached what it thinks is a valid date range.
If as VRover suggests, the clock software was coded simply to discard the year 2002, and to default back to 01 January of that year if it ever faced dates outside the supported range.