Description of problem: After seeing this article on security focus I wanted to test it and as soon as I did I found out that indeed a normal user can efectly halt a system with a simple forkbomb. Steps to Reproduce: 1. open a terminal 2. type :(){:|:?};: 3. press enter and wait a few seconds, after witch the computer will halt completly Actual results: A complete halt, the computer stops to answer interrupts, the mouse stop and no keyboard activity can save ctrl-alt-F1 does not work. Expected results: the process should reproduce till it meet a rational user limit. Then the fork should fail to fork the process.
man ulimit
Do you really feel that this should be a default and that this is not a BUG?
What I mean is that in the default instalation a user can halt a system, without any priviledges, a situation that could be fixed by a simple switch on the defaults. What is the use of having SELinux if you can simply forkbomb the machine???? Now follow me here, SELinux is installed so if a service is compromised the service will not be able to do damage on the system, correct? But httpd have to be able to fork, and as such one person that compromises a httpd server can bring the machine down with all other services with it. I, in my humble opinion, think that this limit in number of proccess a user can have should have been setted to a reasonable number in the kernel, ulimit is a bash feature and does not affect programs that are started by other means, or am I mistaken?