Logic bomb

When a logic bomb is called a computer program portion that causes harmful actions after the occurrence of certain conditions. She does not have the ability to self-replicate, herein it differs from a virus and a worm.

Operation

For example, a programmer smuggle in his program part of a program that deletes important data, if his name no longer appears on the payroll, the disk usage has exceeded a threshold or if the program was called 10 times.

As part of malicious programs, the logic bomb is activated frequently on a specific date such as Friday the 13th or April 1. In it, she works like a Trojan horse. Trojan horses that activate at a specified date will be referred to as " time bombs ".

To be considered a logic bomb, the damage function for the user must be present unknown and unwanted in the software. For example, trials are of commercial software with built-in routines to disable some or all functions not as a logic bomb.

Examples

• Unix Administrator Yung -Hsun Lin wanted by a bomb on 70 Unix servers from his employer Medco Health Solutions delete on his birthday in 2004, medical customer data in order to make themselves as indispensable as a programmer. This he was not able, in a first attempt (because of a script error). The second attempt for his next birthday, an employee could discover in time and defuse. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison and a fine of 81,200 U.S. dollars.

• System Administrator Roger Duronio was sentenced to 97 months in prison because he had implemented malicious code with his former employer, UBS PaineWebber and so on 4 March 2002 were at 9:30 in the headquarters and branch offices in 370 deleted 2000 Server and shut down. The damage caused amounted to over $ 3.1 million to the server to get back in working order. The company suffered a number of years to the damage suffered, some information on the servers could not be restored. Copies of the malicious code could safely be placed on his home computer.

• The Stuxnet virus that consisted of several parts, including and from a logical bomb that only after reaching certain conditions ( eg, checking the frequency of the centrifuge motor between 807 Hz and 1210 Hz and the date in a certain area) was active, and only then to from time to time centrifuges for uranium enrichment through specific frequency changes damage. This is him, according to David Albright, Paul Brannan and Christina Walrond, a researcher at the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) also succeeded, it could have destroyed up to a thousand Iranian centrifuges at Natanz. Due to the high complexity of the virus was suspected that he was a commissioned work of Western intelligence, which was then smuggled via a USB stick. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad acknowledged that would "they" managed to cause problems with a limited number of centrifuges with a software that would "they" installed in electronic components.