Skip to content

fork bomb

Today it means: 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. Full definition →

Ask AI about its historyChatGPT Claude Perplexity Google AI Grok

The story

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

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.