time bomb
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}]