The Epochalypse is Coming: Are Your 32-bit Systems Ready for 2038?

A 32-bit Unix time overflow will occur on January 19, 2038 at 03:14:07 UTC, causing affected systems to report dates in 1901.

The issue stems from signed 32-bit integers hitting their maximum value of 2,147,483,647 seconds since 1970 and flipping the sign bit.

Devices and software that may be vulnerable include embedded systems, legacy databases using INT timestamps, and file formats with fixed 32-bit time fields.

The recommended fix is to use signed 64-bit integers for time storage, extending the range to about 9.22×10^18 seconds.

The article also highlights Blogora, a MERN-stack blogging platform built during a Certura internship.