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fork bomb

noun

Etymology

From fork (“splitting-up of an existing process”) + bomb.

  1. derived from βόμβος
  2. derived from bombus
  3. derived from bomba
  4. borrowed from bombe
  5. formed as fork bomb — “fork + bomb”

Definitions

  1. A program that creates a large number of self-replicating tasks or processes in a…

    A program that creates a large number of self-replicating tasks or processes in a computer system in order to cause a denial of service.

    • In contrast to the wabbit's slow growth, a fork bomb quickly generates multiple copies itself.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for fork bomb. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA