Bomb

Bomb, or a logic bomb, is a kind of coded malware designed to perform some ill-function when certain conditions are met. Such conditions include specific date and time, or action made by the user of the application or web site.

These logic bombs can be traced in viruses or worms but to qualify as bombs, they must meet provisioned characteristics. For example, they get to work not just on behalf of the user but against the user’s will and without his knowledge. Rarely have there been cases of successful triggering of a logic bomb at the national level.

A logic bomb is a program which is planted in an organization’s software system, which is programmed to perform negative activities when some specified conditions are met. Such conditions can range from a certain date and time to an event that the user performs, which makes the logic bombs dangerous because they lie dormant until set off. Security engineers and malware analysts have to be on the lookout for such threats because they are usually embedded in the normal code, thus hard to detect before they go off.

When it comes to software security, logic bombs are a nuisance because they are hidden and can produce devastating effects when launched. While other types of malware are active, logic bombs are programmed to detonate when a certain condition is met: this can be hours, days, weeks or even months later, and this makes it very hard to notice them. This covert characteristic makes them the perfect weapon in the hands of cyber attackers for a directed attack. Such complex monitoring and code analysis tools are often employed by the incident response teams and the cybersecurity professionals to detect any possible conspiracy, which may signify the existence of a logic bomb and neutralize it before it can cause any harm.