Arch Linux

greggh

Member

Registered: 2005-01-26

Posts: 12

Would Arch survive a "fork bomb?"

I was reading this on SecurityFocus.com and they mention that RedHat, Gentoo, and Mandrake all crashed.

http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists … f=rssdebia

I then proceeded to fork bomb every Unix machine I could get my hands on. My FreeBSD server at home shrugged it off (even after inviting other connected users to try), as did my OpenBSD gateway. This, too, is exactly what I expected to happen.

Next, I asked several my associates who use Linux to try it out on their machines, and we didn't have to go far to find more Linux distributions that succumbed to the same painfully effective fork bomb attack. Both Gentoo and Red Hat followed in the footsteps of Mandrake, and each died quicker than you can say "unreasonable default settings." I'll quickly mention here that Debian did not suffer the same fate as the others; congrats to the Debian development team.

For those who are not aware, let me briefly explain the cause of fork bombing. First, the shell must be configured to operate with what I consider to be unreasonable limits. This itself has nothing to do with the kernel. Second, the kernel must allow many more processes to be created than should be. Since shells often default to the maximum number of processes supported by the kernel, together we have a problem.

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WAL*BORG - Resistance is futile. You WILL shop here.

smith

Member

From: Crescent City, CA

Registered: 2005-02-19

Posts: 77

Re: Would Arch survive a "fork bomb?"

This topic has been discussed here.

The gist of it is Arch would not survive a fork bomb and we need to look into ways to secure Arch form this type of attack.

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I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.

tmadhavan

Member

From: Wales :D

Registered: 2004-03-26

Posts: 441

Re: Would Arch survive a "fork bomb?"

Last I heard there was goign to be a 'system-wide-id' setup, where forks are systematically discriminated against and arrested, and only good middle class spoons run free in the kernel.

aCoder

Member

From: Medina, OH

Registered: 2004-03-07

Posts: 359

Website

Re: Would Arch survive a "fork bomb?"

What about sporks?

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If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience.
  - John Cage

phrakture

Arch Overlord

From: behind you

Registered: 2003-10-29

Posts: 7,879

Website

Re: Would Arch survive a "fork bomb?"

mine survives now

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http://phraktured.net

tmadhavan

Member

From: Wales :D

Registered: 2004-03-26

Posts: 441

Re: Would Arch survive a "fork bomb?"

What about sporks?

Probably get away with deportation.