Fork bombing a Linux machine as a non-root user

[Johnathan Bailes]

On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 13:27:33 -0800, Charles A. Crayne
<ccrayne at crayne.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 22:39:51 +0200
> Markku Kolkka <markkuk at tuubi.net> wrote:
> 
> :My machine has the limit set at 8191. Looks like it's determined
> :dynamically, maybe from RAM size? I have 512MB.
> 
> Adding another data point, my default FC3SMP with 1024MB has:
> max user processes (-u) 16383
> 
> -- Chuck
> 

Actually for two reasons I wonder why I even bother worrying.

1.  I have no forward facing services.  People cannot say
http://opus.bloomcounty.net and bring up anything.  The only service I
use is samba limited by IP range only to the inside 192.168.0.x
addresses.

The question being if you have no web accesible services open for
exploitation should this reasonably be a concern.

2.  I am being both an IPtables and a my wireless router's firewall
and I use no publically available IPs from my hosts behind the router.

Plus, I guess a third reason is that tripwire has not seen anything
freaky reaching in.

Now, oddly enough, my samba log for Ultra 5 at work (I run samba on
it) is full of junk with numbnuts inside my own network trying over
and over to log into the box.