• TxzK@lemmy.zip
    1·
    10 months ago

    Every time this gets reposted, I like to reply with this:

    :(){:|:&};:

    Run it if you dare lol

    • Skyhighatrist@lemmy.ca
      1·
      10 months ago

      I don’t know what that is, but it feels to me like it might be a fork bomb.

      Edit: Yep, fork bomb.

      • tb_@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 months ago

        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 & 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)