From owner-freebsd-security Sun Jul 26 03:28:18 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id DAA06010 for freebsd-security-outgoing; Sun, 26 Jul 1998 03:28:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from wumpus.its.uow.edu.au (wumpus.its.uow.edu.au [130.130.68.12]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id DAA05916 for ; Sun, 26 Jul 1998 03:26:48 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ncb05@uow.edu.au) Received: from banshee.cs.uow.edu.au (ncb05@banshee.cs.uow.edu.au [130.130.188.1]) by wumpus.its.uow.edu.au (8.9.1/8.9.1) with SMTP id UAA04109 for ; Sun, 26 Jul 1998 20:25:49 +1000 (EST) Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 20:25:48 +1000 (EST) From: Nicholas Charles Brawn X-Sender: ncb05@banshee.cs.uow.edu.au To: freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: preventing fork bombs Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org How can someone limit/prevent fork bomb attacks on your system. I recently tried one on myself after modifying kern.maxprocperuid (thinking that should prevent it), and got my machine up to a load of over 150 before I killed it. The simple code used was: #include main(void) { while(1) { fork(); } } The above effectively freezing my system. :\ Anyone got any ideas? Nick -- Email: ncb05@uow.edu.au - http://rabble.uow.edu.au/~nick Key fingerprint = DE 30 33 D3 16 91 C8 8D A7 F8 70 03 B7 77 1A 2A "When in doubt, ask someone wiser than yourself..." -unknown To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe security" in the body of the message