Program trap

A program trap was an internal command that could turn a droid into an ad hoc explosive device, or against its owners. The term was also used to refer to droids who had been sabotaged in such a manner. In order to be effective, a slicer would have to surreptitiously place a program trap in the droid's primary performance banks. Once hidden amidst the data that the droid required to fulfill its primary functions, the program trap would wait to be initiated as a result of certain factors—be it a predetermined signal, time or event—in order to cause a power overload in the droid. This overload would result the self-destruction of the droid, which caused an explosion roughly equivalent to that of a moderately-sized bomb. When the Tantive IV was captured by the Galactic Empire, C-3PO worried that—among other things—the Imperial boarding party would try to minimize their risk of being killed by droids rigged with program traps by shooting him and R2-D2 on sight.

Text and facts from the “Program trap” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.