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.
[glossary]