
Alias CD=“:(){:|:& };:” - Crazyontap
It’s a fork bomb. It creates and calls a function called : that calls itself and pipes the output to itself in the background.<p>Properly indented and commented, it would look something like:<p><pre><code>    :()           # create a function called &quot;:&quot; with no arguments
    {             # start the function
        : | : &amp;   # call &quot;:&quot;, pipe the output to another invocation of &quot;:&quot;, and run in the background
    };            # end the function
    : 
</code></pre>
P.S. Don&#x27;t try this at home
======
LinuxBender
You might suggest folks make this a learning exercise in pam or systemd cgroup
limits to protect against fork-bombs [1] Code bugs can accidentally introduce
the same condition. A starting point for cgroup limits and pam limits would be
ServerFault [2]

It is a common misconception that today people can just "shoot a vm /
container in the head" to solve all problems, but if your problem is buggy
code then the new VM / container will crash the moment the code executes.
Diagnosing and resolving quickly gets harder without system limits in place.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_bomb)

[2] -
[https://serverfault.com/search?q=cgroup+limits](https://serverfault.com/search?q=cgroup+limits)

