12 votes

Challenge: defuse this fork bomb

Posted by Soptik
Tags: shell, forkbomb, challenge.programming, obfuscation

On lobste.rs I found link to an article from Vidar Holen, the author of shellcheck. He made a fork bomb that is really interesting. Here's the bomb:

DO NOT RUN THIS.

eval $(echo "I<RA('1E<W3t`rYWdl&r()(Y29j&r{,3Rl7Ig}&r{,T31wo});r`26<F]F;==" | uudecode)

This may look pretty obvious, but it's harder than you think. I fell for it. twice. Can you find out how this bomb works?

Warning: executing the bomb will slow down your computer and will force you to restart.
You can limit impact of the fork bomb by setting FUNCNEST.

export FUNCNEST=3

Have fun!

1 comment

  1. notopygos
    Link
    This is the command that actually runs when you run that, that article explains this. Everything else doesn't do anything. `r() ( r & r ); r` I too feel for it once, I ran echo...

    This is the command that actually runs when you run that, that article explains this. Everything else doesn't do anything.

    `r() ( r & r ); r`

    I too feel for it once, I ran echo "I<RA('1E<W3t`rYWdl&r()(Y29j&r{,3Rl7Ig}&r{,T31wo});r`26<F]F;==" | uudecode

    6 votes