what is fork bomb and how to avoid it

The fork bomb is recursive bash function. It is DoS attack against linux operating system. Definition of fork bomb:

:(){ :|:& };:

What do all these symbols mean?
:() - defines function called ":"
:|: - recursive sends output to ":"
& - puts function to background
; - terminate the function definition
: - at the end calls function

Be careful this example may crush your computer. We can prevent against fork bomb limiting the number of processes for user (or group of users) in file /etc/security/limits.conf.

For example we want to limit number of process to 300:

likeIT hard nproc 30

"likeIT" is name of user. If you want to apply this limitation to group, use "@groupName".

There is a example of whole configuration file:

Let's explain some important key word from /etc/security/limits.conf file:

[domain] [type] [item] [value]

Domain can be:

• an user name
• a group name - use @group syntax

• soft - for enforcing the soft limits
• hard - for enforcing hard limits

• core - limit the core file size (KB)
• fsize - maximum filesize (KB)
• cpu – max CPU time (MIN)
• nproc – max number of processes

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