{
  "id": 9307931,
  "title": "I flipped one bit in an image file. PNG died, JPEG lied.",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/23/i-flipped-one-bit-in-an-image-file-png-died-jpeg-lied",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-23T09:41:02.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Dev.to",
    "slug": "dev-to",
    "url": "https://dev.to/remdore/i-flipped-one-bit-in-an-image-file-png-died-jpeg-lied-35b3"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A single flipped bit in an image file can have vastly different consequences depending on the file format used. In this experiment, a 512×512 image was encoded in various formats including PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, AVIF, and BMP. Each file had one bit flipped and the results were decoded multiple times. Out of 400 flips in PNG, none were successfully decoded, while JPEG showed 100% success at rendering a corrupted image, even if it was wrong. WebP and GIF also decoded successfully, but the quality was poor. BMP, which stores raw pixel data, only showed minor degradation due to the lack of compression and error detection. The experiment highlights the importance of detecting and handling corrupted files, as different formats react differently to bit flips. Storing a hash alongside critical images and decoding them upon arrival can help identify errors early in a processing pipeline.",
  "summary": "A cosmic ray, a dying SSD sector, a truncated upload, a bad cable. Somewhere in your storage, one bit in one image file flips from a 0 to a 1. What happens to the picture? The honest answer is that it depends entirely on the format, and the differences are much stranger than \"some are more robust than others\". I encoded the same 512×512 image as PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, AVIF and BMP, flipped exactly…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}