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Recently, there was an article on Security Focus, about how it is possible to forkbomb most of the Linux distributions. It has nothing to do with a vulnerability/bug in the kernel, it is simply a configuration issue. Apparently, most of the Linux distributions do not set the security configurations for this, by default (Debian was an exception, I guess).
There was also a thread on the lkml.
Some of the solutions suggested were to use man ulimit or edit the settings in /etc/security/limits.conf and restrict the number of process that a user can fork.
Old!
This is nothing new, it was discovered __years__ ago.
The configuration for ulimit is the reponsibility of the system administrator IMHO.
Move along!
Exactly!
Such an old attack vector is not protected by the *default* security configurations in most Linux distributions. Yes, it is the administrator's responsibility, but also the distributions'.