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)
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