This is possible, from my own second-hand experience.
I knew somebody doing a University project at my old Uni who left a program running over the weekend. I don't know how, but it was a Java app accessing a database and somehow a test case got triggered which looped infinitely.
It added 30k null DB rows a minute to the database on the server. Naturally, said server died, and the RAM had to be physically swapped out as it was apparently cooked.
True story.
