Occasionally we have some test which lets Surefire fail hard which Hudson doesn't recognize. I.e. the tests are not executed, but the build result is still success.
E.g. we had a test which failed with a NoSuchFieldException in the constructor of the test class:

Running TestSuite
log4j:WARN No appenders could be found for logger (...).
log4j:WARN Please initialize the log4j system properly.
org.apache.maven.surefire.booter.SurefireExecutionException:
Cannot instantiate class XyzTest; nested exception is org.testng.TestNGException:
Cannot instantiate class XyzTest
org.testng.TestNGException:
Cannot instantiate class XyzTest
at org.testng.internal.ObjectFactoryImpl.newInstance(ObjectFactoryImpl.java:35)
at org.testng.internal.ClassHelper.createInstance(ClassHelper.java:330)
at org.testng.internal.ClassImpl.getDefaultInstance(ClassImpl.java:62)
at org.testng.internal.ClassImpl.getInstances(ClassImpl.java:81)
at org.testng.internal.TestNGClassFinder.<init>(TestNGClassFinder.java:114)
at org.testng.TestRunner.initMethods(TestRunner.java:289)
at org.testng.TestRunner.init(TestRunner.java:235)
at org.testng.TestRunner.init(TestRunner.java:197)
at org.testng.TestRunner.<init>(TestRunner.java:141)
at org.testng.SuiteRunner$DefaultTestRunnerFactory.newTestRunner(SuiteRunner.java:488)
at org.testng.SuiteRunner.privateRun(SuiteRunner.java:250)
at org.testng.SuiteRunner.run(SuiteRunner.java:204)
at org.testng.TestNG.createAndRunSuiteRunners(TestNG.java:877)
at org.testng.TestNG.runSuitesLocally(TestNG.java:842)
at org.testng.TestNG.run(TestNG.java:751)
at org.apache.maven.surefire.testng.TestNGExecutor.run(TestNGExecutor.java:62)
at org.apache.maven.surefire.testng.TestNGDirectoryTestSuite.execute(TestNGDirectoryTestSuite.java:141)
at org.apache.maven.surefire.Surefire.run(Surefire.java:180)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
at org.apache.maven.surefire.booter.SurefireBooter.runSuitesInProcess(SurefireBooter.java:350)
at org.apache.maven.surefire.booter.SurefireBooter.main(SurefireBooter.java:1021)
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(NativeConstructorAccessorImpl.java:39)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.newInstance(DelegatingConstructorAccessorImpl.java:27)
at java.lang.reflect.Constructor.newInstance(Constructor.java:513)
at org.testng.internal.ObjectFactoryImpl.newInstance(ObjectFactoryImpl.java:26)
... 23 more
Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchFieldException: cipherService
at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredField(Class.java:1882)
at XyzTest.<init>(XyzTest.java:91)
... 28 more
[ERROR] There are test failures.