a fork bomb is a denial-of-service (DoS) attack wherein a process continually replicates itself to deplete available system resources, slowing down or crashing the system due to resource starvation.
[…]
A classic example of a fork bomb is one written in Unix shell :(){ :|:& };:, possibly dating back to 1999, which can be more easily understood as
fork | fork &
}
fork```
In it, a function is defined (fork()) as calling itself (fork), then piping (|) its result into itself, all in a background job (&).
The code using a colon : as the function name is not valid in a shell as defined by POSIX, which only permits alphanumeric characters and underscores in function names. However, its usage is allowed in GNU Bash as an extension.
You’re telling markdown to format the code in the language fork() { and then break the code block early by not having > in front of the next line. Here’s a quoted code block formatted in sh:
Because I didn’t know what a fork bomb was:
[…]
} fork```
Wikipedia
You’re telling markdown to format the code in the language
fork() {and then break the code block early by not having>in front of the next line. Here’s a quoted code block formatted insh: