The following quote is from the article "Linux Kernel Security, Again" (http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/308):
"Don't get me wrong. Linux doesn't suck. But I do believe that the Linux kernel team (and some of the Linux distributions that are still vulnerable to fork bombing) need to take proactive security a little more seriously. I'm griping for a reason here -- things need to be change." Sure enough, I created the following script and ran it as a non-root user: #!/bin/bash $0 & $0 & and ran it on Fedora Core 3 with kernel 2.6.11.5 (the box is an Athlon XP 2500+ Barton with 512M on an nForce2 board). The system locked up tighter than a drum. However... After about two minutes the system "unlocked" and responsiveness returned to normal. I can see where this would be an issue on a production system, especially if you could kick off a new fork bomb to continuously lock the system. Is this really a kernel issue? Or is there a better way in userland to stop this kind of crap? Regards - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
