Bacteria (malware)

Bacteria (also known as rabbit programs) are a type of malware that create many instances of themselves, or run many times simultaneously, in order to consume large amounts of system resources. This creates a denial of service effect as legitimate programs may no longer be able to run, or at least may not run properly. Unlike worms, bacteria do not necessarily spread over the network.

References

* [http://www.ce.chalmers.se/edu/course/EDA262/oh06/ohF03_malware_intro.pdf Introduction to malware]
* [http://www.unix.org.ua/orelly/networking/puis/ch11_01.htm Protecting against programmed threats]

ee also

*Computer worm