Wabbit

A wabbit is an old class of malware that replicates locally rather than across the network like a worm. By continuously forking processes, creating files, or filling the disk, it consumes CPU, memory, or storage until the host becomes unusable. The classic example is a fork bomb, a tiny script that recursively spawns child processes until the operating system collapses. Wabbits are usually denial-of-service tools rather than data-theft malware, sometimes used as pranks or as part of a destructive payload. Defences include process and resource limits (ulimit, cgroups), kernel and OS hardening, least-privilege accounts, and EDR detection of abnormal process creation rates.