17 lines
930 B
Plaintext
17 lines
930 B
Plaintext
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.
|
|
|