cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/14479799
Linux Best Practices
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Every time this gets reposted, I like to reply with this:
:(){:|:&};:
Run it if you dare lol
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I don’t know what that is, but it feels to me like it might be a fork bomb.
Edit: Yep, fork bomb.
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Because I didn’t know what a fork bomb was:
a fork bomb is a denial-of-service (DoS) attack wherein a process continually replicates itself to deplete available system resources, slowing down or crashing the system due to resource starvation.
[…]
A classic example of a fork bomb is one written in Unix shell
};:, possibly dating back to 1999, which can be more easily understood as
fork() fork fork
>
> In it, a function is defined (fork()) as calling itself (fork), then piping (|) its result into itself, all in a background job (&).
>
> The code using a colon `:` as the function name is not valid in a shell as defined by POSIX, which only permits alphanumeric characters and underscores in function names. However, its usage is allowed in GNU Bash as an extension.
[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb)
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