time bomb

n. 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 a suspended sentence of 3 years in jail and was
barred from future work as a programmer.

