Security News > 2022 > February > Did we learn nothing from Y2K? Why are some coders still stuck on two digit numbers?
If you use Mozilla Firefox or any Chromium-based browser, notably Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, you'll know that the version numbers of these products are currently at 97 and 98 respectively.
If you've ever looked at your browser's User-Agent string, you'll know that these version numbers are, by default, transmitted to every web page you visit, as a kind of handy hint to say, "Look who's coming to dinner."
As you can see, there are plenty of different version numbers and other details that an interested web server could extract from those headers: a single-digit Mozilla number; a three-digit AppleWebKit and Safari number; two- and four- digit components in the Edg designator.
Hard enough, apparently that both the Firefox and Chromium communities have been fretting about what to do when their respective browsers reach version 100, and the first part of any multi-part version number switches from two digits to three.
Amazingly, though thankfully quite rarely, there really are still websites that will get flummoxed when the switchover happens, and will make millennium-bug style blunders by failing to figure out the version number at all.
If three-digit version numbers are beyond your grasp, what impression does that give your visitors about the reliablity of how you might process other variable-length data such as payment amounts, credit card details, postcodes and other personal information?