There's no one particular failure event that can take out an ECU; there are many possibilities. It's a complex electronic device and many different factors can contribute to a failure. Examples are over voltage (voltage spikes, static electricity) or over current (short circuits) conditions that destroy components on the circuit board, natural end-of-life failure of a device, over or under temperature conditions that exceed the manufacturer's recommendations, etc. Electronics will either die very early (within the first few hours) or very late; lookup "electronics reliability curve" on the net. If left alone, the ECU can live a very long failure free life spanning many decades. If disturbed or subjected to those above factors, the ECU can fail catastrophically in an instant.