Fork Bomb

A fork bomb is a variation of a DOS (denial of service) attack. It typically implements a fork operation to take up available processes on a computer. Contrary to popular belief, a fork bomb usually will not distribute viruses or worms. It functions by quickly creating several processes in order to claim the available space on an operating system. If a table becomes saturated with processes, no new applications may be started unless another one is terminated. When this occurs, it is very likely that the application may never be started as the fork bomb intends to claim that slot for itself. Aside from using space in a process table, a fork bomb also uses memory and processing time. This results in the system and it’s existing applications becoming slow, sluggish and sometimes, completely inoperable. Mostly used with malicious intent, fork bombs also occur by mistake, a situation that is common in software development. In this instance, a trivial bug in the source code could result in a fork bomb when tested by the developer.