Fork Bomb-Dangerous

:(){ :|: & };: – Fork Bomb

The following line is a simple-looking, but dangerous, bash function:

:(){ :|: & };:

This short line defines a shell function that creates new copies of itself. The process continually replicates itself, and its copies continually replicate themselves, quickly taking up all your CPU time and memory. This can cause your computer to freeze. It’s basically a denial-of-service attack.

The Lesson: Bash functions are powerful, even very short ones.