A logic bomb is a piece of software that sits dormant for a period of time until some event causes its malicious payload to be implemented.

One definition for a time bomb is

A time bomb is a piece of software that sits dormant for a period of time until some specific date and/or time causes its malicious payload to be implemented.

Some people use the term logic bomb to refer to both logic and time bombs.

Logic Bombs.  I want to take a little bit of time to write some more about logic bombs.

Some examples of situations where logic bombs might occur are

• an intruder leaves behind some things to ensure that any traces they have left of their intrusion are wiped out if discovered
• a disgruntled employee causes certain records to be deleted when and if they are terminated

Some examples of logic bombs are

Time Bombs.  I want to take a little bit of time to write some more about time bombs.

Some examples of time bombs are

• Michelangelo Virus - which was set to go off on March 6 - the birthday of the Renaissance sculptor/painter.
  • it was designed to delete particular data from user's hard drives
• Chernobyl Virus - which was set to go off on April 26 - the date of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster
  • attempted to rewrite the victim's BIOS
  • attempted to erase the victim's hard drive
• Blaster - attempted an attack on windowupdate.com
• Code Red - attempted attack on the United State's White House website

   

Protection.  The single best approach to protecting your system from bombs is to never download an/or install that has uncertain sources, security and integrity.  A good up-to-date virus scanning program should help considerably with detecting known bombs that have gotten installed on a system.  Such virus scanning software should also help to detect and prevent installation of bombs.

More will be added.