time bomb

software, security A subspecies of logic bomb that is

triggered by reaching some preset time, either once or

periodically. There are numerous legends about time bombs set

up by programmers in their employers' machines, to go off if

the programmer is fired or laid off and is not present to

perform the appropriate suppressing action periodically.

Interestingly, the only such incident for which we have been

pointed to documentary evidence took place in the Soviet Union

in 1986! A disgruntled programmer at the Volga Automobile

Plant (where the Fiat clones called Ladas were manufactured)

planted a time bomb which, a week after he'd left on vacation,

stopped the entire main assembly line for a day. The case

attracted lots of attention in the Soviet Union because it was

the first cracking case to make it to court there. The

perpetrator got 3 years in jail.

[Jargon File]

(2001-09-15)