A program planted surreptitiously, with intent to damage or destroy a system in some way—for example, to erase a hard disk or cause it to be unreadable to the operating system. See also Trojan horse, virus, worm.

ETYM French bombe bombshell, from Latin bombus a humming or buzzing noise, Greek bombos.
An explosive device fused to denote under specific conditions.
Container filled with explosive or chemical material and generally used in warfare. There are also incendiary bombs and nuclear bombs and missiles (see nuclear warfare). Any object designed to cause damage by explosion can be called a bomb (automobile bombs, letter bombs). Initially dropped from airplanes (from World War I), bombs were in World War II also launched by rocket (V1, V2). The 1960s saw the development of missiles that could be launched from aircraft, land sites, or submarines. In the 1970s laser guidance systems were developed to hit small targets with accuracy.

To attack with bombs.

To fail abruptly and completely, without giving the user a chance to recover from the problem short of restarting the program or system. See also abend, bug (definition 1), crash2 (definition 1), hang.