The Fork-bomb: the One-Line Virus of colons and brackets that would crash a Unix system

PHOTO EMBED

Sun Dec 29 2019 20:10:36 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Saved by @happycardstwo #commandline #interesting #cyberattacks #security #unix

: ( ) { : | : & } ; : 
content_copyCOPY

Incredible how just some symbols could break a computer! This piece of code will no longer do that, but an older and more susceptible copy of the Unix operating system would instantly crash. This command typed into Bash replicates itself over and over until it consumes all available memory in the computer at which point the system crashes.