Odd behaviour on Bash 2.04 and 2.05

[Christian Bodmer]

Hi,

A friend of mine stumbled over a sequence of characters with which he could 
easily take down a running Debian and Suse (7.2) Linux 2.4 system.

Problem description:

- Login in to Linux, start bash if it's not default already, and enter the 
following bogus command:

:(){ :|:&};:

- Press enter a couple of times, wait, and after a while you will get:

bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
bash: fork: Cannot allocate memory
bash: pipe error: Too many open files in system
bash: pipe error: Too many open files in system
bash: pipe error: Too many open files in system
bash: pipe error: Too many open files in system
...
indefinetly until your linux box runs out of swap space and needs to be hard-
reset.


Tested on:
GNU bash, version 2.05.0(1)-release (i386-suse-linux)
Copyright 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

GNU bash, version 2.04.0(1)-release (i386-suse-linux)
Copyright 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Is this problem specific to Suse? Is it a possible bug?

Thanks,
Chris

ps: Please CC me for replies as I am not on the list/newsgroup