What is the rabbit virus, fork bomb, or wabbit?
A rabbit virus or wabbit or fork bomb is a denial of service attack in which a process continually replicates itself and creates a large number of child processes until the system experiences resource starvation. As a result, the target system slows down and crashes.
A basic implementation of a rabbit virus or fork bomb is an infinite loop that repeatedly creates processes. This attack consumes lots of CPU cycles and Operating System resources.
In Unix-like operating systems, a rabbit virus or fork bomb is implemented by running the fork in an infinite loop. In Microsoft Windows, it can be implemented by creating a new process inside an infinite loop.
A rabbit virus, once started, proves difficult to stop. The problem is that lots of new processes are created within a short span of time. And it becomes very difficult to find new processes and terminate them within that time.
How to prevent a rabbit virus, fork bomb, or wabbit?
Nowadays, most of the operating systems take measures to prevent this type of attack. In the operating systems process table, at least one slot is reserved so that the fork bomb cannot use up the whole process table. So, it becomes possible to launch another process that can kill the other processes.
In modern Unix-like operating systems, the entire system can even limit the total number of processes a single user can create. This is achieved by the ulimit command.
So, stay safe and protect your systems against DoS attacks! I hope this helps. Interested readers who want to know more about how different malware and cyberattacks work and how we can prevent them may want to refer to the book “A Guide To Cyber Security.”






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