

- A bug in the code controlling the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine was directly responsible for at least five patient deaths in the 1980s when it administered excessive quantities of beta radiation.
- Radiation therapy planning software RTP/2 created by Multidata Systems International could incorrectly double the dosage of radiation depending on how the technician entered data into the machine. At least eight patients died, while another 20 received overdoses likely to cause significant health problems (November 2000).
- A Medtronic heart device was found vulnerable to remote attacks (2008-03).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_bugs#Tracking_years
To answer the original question, even though @RedWeasel@lemmy.world’s advice really is superior:
All commands that can be executed via your shell must live in your
$PATH
or their subdirectories. You could enumerate all files in there, filter by being executable, and run them with the--help
argument.You can then filter these commands by their exit code. If
--help
is a recognized flag, the exit code should be0
. Otherwise it should be something else. (Running every command blindly might be a bad idea though.)