|
|
|
|
|
|
|
type shows up the next morning for a 'security review' and finds the sign, note, etc., and all hell breaks loose. Serious successes of tiger teams sometimes lead to early retirement for base commanders and security officers (see the patch entry for an example). 2. Recently, and more generally, any official inspection team or special firefighting group called in to look at a problem. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A subset of tiger teams are professional crackers, testing the security of military computer installations by attempting remote attacks via networks or supposedly 'secure' comm channels. Some of their escapades, if declassified, would probably rank among the greatest hacks of all times. The term has been adopted in commercial computer-security circles in this more specific sense. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
time bomb n. 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. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
time sink n. [poss. by analogy with 'heat sink' or 'current sink'] A project that consumes unbounded amounts of time. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
time T /tim T/ n. 1. An unspecified but usually well-understood time, often used in conjunction with a later time T + 1. "We'll meet on campus at time T or at Louie's at time T + 1" means, in the context of going out for dinner: "We can meet on campus and go to Louie's, or we can meet at Louie's itself a bit later." (Louie's was a Chinese restaurant in Palo Alto that was a favorite with hackers.) Had the number 30 been used instead of the number 1, it would have implied that the travel time from campus to Louie's is 30 minutes; whatever time T is (and that hasn't been decided on yet), you can meet half an hour later at Louie's than you could on campus and end up eating at the same time. See also since time T equals minus infinity. |
|
|
|
|
|