<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)
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