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Date:      Sun, 26 Jul 1998 15:38:01 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Liam Slusser <liam@tiora.net>
To:        "Jan B. Koum " <jkb@best.com>
Cc:        Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05@uow.edu.au>, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: preventing fork bombs
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.980726153558.17025A-100000@orbital.tiora.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980726135906.5143C-100000@shell6.ba.best.com>

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i tried that on my system, 

orbital#
 3:11PM  up 45 days,  1:12, 3 users, load averages: 511.89, 384.91, 198.55
orbital# 

notice..511..not bad for a pentium 133  ;)

though if you run it at a nice +15, it just jumps the load avg...and other
users hardly notice..;)  (that 511 was a nice +15)

liam

On Sun, 26 Jul 1998, Jan B. Koum  wrote:

> 
> 	n1ck .. man 5 lgoin.conf? Don't know if it will help though.
> 	Ohh.. and stop wasting so much space for yer C code:
> echo "main(){while(1){fork();}}">foo.c;gcc foo.c;rm foo.c;./a.out
> 	Much more compact, eh? :)
> 
> Now. Here is something interesting. I tried this on my IPC with 16MB of
> RAM running OpenBSD. It didn't crash, but simply said:
> 
> rome:usr {87} w
> No more processes.
> rome:usr {88} uptime
> No more processes.
> 
> The interesting part is that the user running ./a.out would get "No more 
> processes" - root AND other users (not the same user that run ./a.out
> though) was still able to do everything just fine (but freaking slow at
> first):
> 
> rome:usr {85} id
> uid=0(root) gid=0(wheel) groups=0(wheel), 2(kmem), 3(sys), 4(tty),
> 5(operator), 20(staff), 31(guest)
> rome:etc {99} uptime
>  2:16PM  up 12:50, 2 users, load averages: 78.44, 63.11, 34.65
> rome:load {5} id
> uid=1001(load) gid=1001(load) groups=1001(load)
> rome:load {6} uptime
>  2:33PM  up 13:08, 3 users, load averages: 78.67, 65.73, 54.17
> rome:etc {120} ps ax | grep a.out | wc -l
>       79 
> 
> Load stays around 78 and root and others can do whatever they want.
> 
> I could telnet to the system just fine also. I guess now I'll have to
> figure out what exactly makes this possible and could FreeBSD do the same.
> (didn't see anything in sysctl and there is no /etc/login.conf either).
> 
> -- Yan
> 
> Jan Koum                  jkb@best.com |  "Turn up the lights; I don't want
> www.FreeBSD.org --  The Power to Serve |   to go home in the dark."
> "Write longer sentences - they are paying us a lot of money"
> 
> On Sun, 26 Jul 1998, Nicholas Charles Brawn wrote:
> 
> >How can someone limit/prevent fork bomb attacks on your system. I
> >recently tried one on myself after modifying kern.maxprocperuid (thinking
> >that should prevent it), and got my machine up to a load of over 150
> >before I killed it.
> >
> >The simple code used was:
> >
> >#include <unistd.h>
> >
> >main(void) {
> >	while(1) {
> >		fork();
> >	}
> >}
> >
> >The above effectively freezing my system. :\
> >
> >Anyone got any ideas?
> >
> >Nick
> >
> >--
> >Email: ncb05@uow.edu.au - http://rabble.uow.edu.au/~nick 
> >Key fingerprint =  DE 30 33 D3 16 91 C8 8D  A7 F8 70 03 B7 77 1A 2A
> >"When in doubt, ask someone wiser than yourself..." -unknown
> >
> >
> >To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
> >with "unsubscribe security" in the body of the message
> >
> 
> 
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> 


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