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SCO DOS Harming Innocent Bystanders
An anonymous reader writes "The SCO-IBM-Linux controversy has certainly caused quite a stir. Unfortunately the vigilantes conducting the DOS attacks against SCO are harming innocent by-standers as described in this e-Week story. " Choice conspiracy theory quote: 'Given SCO's behavior recently, it's just as likely that they're attacking themselves in their continued attempt to pump up their stock price'
Maybe we should all test it. Right now.
I like their poll. I wonder how SCO's PR department would spin the fact that 96% of people think SCO are smoking crack.
Oh, as if the UNIX scandal wasn't bad enough... now they are after DOS as well!!!
This is why script kiddies are annoying. They find exploits and other scripts/tools and then randomly use them thinking they know what they're doing.
This is why armchair slashdot readers typically shouldn't be lawyers [myself included], doctors, etc...
I hope they catch the people doing the DoS attack [probably as they brag how cool the attack is over some l33t IRC channelz] and beat their heads into the ground.
SCO maybe "evil" but you gotta think before you act!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Yeah, well tough shit. If they don't like it, they can complain to their ISP to get those SCO criminals booted off their network.
</sarcasm>
Sorry, I was just trying to imitate the SPEWS guys ;-)
I highly doubt that SCO is peforming this attack themselves. There are simply too many others willing to do it for them.
If a SCO executive ordered the self-attack, and a loyal SCO IT person (I want a shot of what he's drinking) carried it out, when the FBI comes calling, how far up the tree would the IT person point when he was arrested?
If a SCO executive was pinpointed in ordering a DOS (unlikely, but hey, Enron being publicly exposed was unlikely), how would that affect the Linux lawsuit? IANAL, but it seems like SCO execs would have nothing to gain from DOSing theirselves and only fines or Jail-time to face.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
http://news.netcraft.com/
The SCO site has been up during business hours in Utah, but has since failed again. Many news sites carried the story that Eric Raymond had spoken to agroup responsible for a Distributed Denial of Service attack on the www.sco.com site and that they agreed to stop. However it appears that this may have been a hoax, or they subsequently changed their minds, or another person decided to continue the attack, or that the timeout on the attack has not yet been reached.
In a similar situation 10 days ago Microsoft chose to deploy Akamai's caching service, which has successfully averted any outages.
Akamai would be more dependable at warding off Distributed Denial of Service attacks than favours from Eric Raymond, but concievably SCO may have difficulty swallowing its pride and buying a service that uses tens of thousands of Linux servers, for which Akamai presumably has not purchased a SCO licence.
I don't think so, this is a PR war, and has been from the instant SCO started the FUD campaign. Linux users cannot be seen as a group of geeks with no respect for the law and proper buisness procedures. The very thing SCO needs right now is something to feed to the FUD machine, and the last thing geeks need to give SCO is ammunition.
Perhaps SCO placed the alleged IP infringing code into the linux kernel themselves. Maybe the code contains a timebomb so as to cause a distributed denial of service attack against SCO, giving them more publicity. I wonder when the Underpants Gnomes are going to sue SCO for patent infringement for their unique business model...
So much for trying to be funny...
Not that I want to endorce vigialantism, but DOS attacks on SCO and its partners could be used to stop other corporations from doing business with them. Perhaps that is the DOS attackers' goal. However, I do not think that the DOS attacks are productive to the goal of getting rid of SCO's attacks on Linux.
IMO, a much better strategy would be for everyone using Linux to start buying SCO stock, and then, as a stock holder action, vote all of SCO's patents and copyrights into the public domain (and then disolve the company).
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
Well, if their server had been running proper licensed SCO code then it would not only have survived the continual DoS, but would have shot down the attacking machines in droves...
...but no, they just want to demonstrate how crap Apache & Linux is, especially since it is stolen perversion of all of SCO's IP. And what an effective demonstaration it is, why that must be propping up the stock value by about 99%
;-)
That the concept of DOS attacks is owned by SCO! SCO developed this technology very early on.
All those running worms/shell scripts used in DOS attacks can license the IP behind it now! Only $799! (Special Introductory Price).
Easy guys, I put my pants on one leg at a time. The difference is after I put on my pants I make gold records!
Smoking Crack Operation
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Yes, MS-DOS was created in Redmond.
Yes, I am a pedantic geek.
Please use DoS for Denial of Service, and DOS for Disk Operating System. "of" shouldn't be capitalized.
Too bad the Deptartment of Transportation had to screw up my little world with DOT. Quit shouting "dot!"
Since when was there conclusive proof that SCO were actually being hit by DoS/DDoS?
I remember reading elsewhere that it's entirely possible that they've just taken down there site of their own accord.
Another US$100k to the senior VP on Tuesday last week.
Makes it One Million Dollarsin two months.
Reginald C. Broughton...come on down!
(so it's OT, but keep watching these bastards).
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
Eventually SCO will go broke trying to win its laughable lawsuit. IBM has the resources to fight the case and the Open Source Community shouldn't worry about a few lost revenues in the meantime. One of the reasons why Linux has been able to take on Microsoft is the fact the M$ can't undermine the open source revenue stream when it is practically non-existant.
In the meantime, is there any reason why we should stoop to SCO's level?
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
Who exactly isn't an innocent bystander here, besides SCO and IBM? SCO has been harming a massive number of innocent bystanders throughout this whole process (for example, the 1,500 Linux-using companies that they sent letters to, costing them legal time at the very least). No, two wrongs don't make a right and it sucks that the DOS attacks are harming innocent bystanders, but why is eWeek focusing on that when SCO is harming so many more innocents?
Next McBribe will be showing off a server stats chart to stock holders as proof of sco's growing relevance in the high tech world.
I've noticed that the net seems to have been particularly slow recently. Checking on Xaffire Inc.'s Internet Average it's obvious that there are a few problems. Could this be a combination of the various DDoS's occuring at the moment and the recent worms?
sorry but http://www.caldera.com/company/drdos.html
says: "EMBEDDED LINUX MOVED TO TOP PRIORITY AT LINEO, INC., FORMERLY KNOWN AS CALDERA THIN CLIENTS, INC.
Lineo's Embedded Linux, Based on Caldera Systems' OpenLinux, is Natural Evolution for Companies With Years of Success in Both Linux and Embedded DOS"
ah well couldn't find much more under 1 minute.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
LSD more often sparks insight or provides a novel point of view rather than causing outright delusions. Cocaine and amphetamines on the other hand can cause outright schizophreniform psychosis if taken for too long. This and the correlation between D2 receptor antagonism and antipsychotic potency is why schizophrenia is thought to be a largely dopaminergic disorder. Though it's becoming clear that glutaminergic and cholinergic systems play a significant role.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
There is absolutley no justification for DOS'ing SCO.
DOS attacks are the internet equivalent of standing outside someones home playing heavy metal at 140 dB.
I'm puzzled as to what the guys making the attack hoped to accomplish.
To punish them for lying about linux? Their reputations are already in the toilet. Only ignorant fools are buying into their claims anyway.
To protect Linux? If one thinks about it, SCO has not harmed Linux in any meaningful way! The free distro's are there, and will be there for a long time. All they've done is slowed down adoption by the more clueless managers, which is really no big deal. Their legal claims about the GPL being invalid are such arrant nonsense: they won't stand in court. No matter what happens there will always be a GPLed kernel we can use.
To let them know we think they suck? Well, considering the increasingly defensive and irrational stances that they are taking, I think they already know that. The rest of the world is not buying into their claims. Even if their claims of hundreds of "licenses" sold are not wildly exagerated, that would mean 1% adoption rate.
To prevent people from doing business with SCO? I think that's pretty unethical. If people want to do business with SCO, let them. It's their choice if they want to throw good money away on vapor-ware of bad product. Would you prevent a stranger from buying cigarettes with his own money?
I know alot of people think using force to shut people up who say things you don't like is OK. But those people should take a look at the impression this gives to the non-geek world. They just reinforced the impression that OSS proponents are whiny immature people.
I think the guys behind the attacks scored an own goal.
The SCO's hosting facility (formerly known as Center7, later spun off as via west) is owned and operated by the Canopy Group. So if the attack is effecting the hosting company, then it is causing harm to SCO indirectly. CenterShift should choose a hosting company that isn't owned by SCO's parent company. If you click on the canopy group link you will see a few other choice companies you might want to choose NOT to do business with: Linux Networx, shame on you - But TrollTech, on the same page as SCO??? All you KDE guys out there might want to think about switching to Gnome, otherwise you are giving a SCO your support.
Are people really naive enough to think that DOS attacks don't almost always harm innocent bystanders?
Our corporate e-mail was out for a couple of days earlier this week.
I'm blaming SCO for it.
"Sir, looks like a friendly fire incident"
http://jesus.everdense.com/
This site seems to be working fine as well.
The same way the customers in Israeli cafes are a legit target of suicide attacks?
If they don't want to be blown up, they should just stop supporting Israeli occupation of Palestine! It doesn't matter what their personal opinions are, they are guilty by association!
Don't be a psychopath. It is not okay to blackmail or extort or terrorize people in order to force them to see things your way. Damaging innocent third parties in an effort to get those parties to put pressure on your enemy, is basically what terrorism is all about.
Well, sort of anyway. Center 7 is actually their hosting company, but Center 7 is one of Canopy's main companies, in fact it may be one of the only ones that really makes money which Canopy then uses to fund all the other ones.
So while Centershift may want to change ISPs, Canopy will probably sue them if they do. Hell, they may even sue them if they don't. That's what seems to happen to anyone that has a contract with a Canopy company.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Slashdot.. Land of nerds, trolls, and FlameBait..
My company hosts at the same Data Center. That center is a professional setup. They have good redundant internet pipes from multiple providers. A DoS attack based on flooding would be quite difficult. Some other big players are there as well. No one has recieved this collateral damage. I believe CenterShift is having trouble with poor server administration, maybe even some problems with Sobig or variants and are trying to blame someone else for their down time. We keep a close eye on things and if something is happening to SCO it is not hitting other customers.
On another note, the center is also owned by the Canopy Group and is very Linux friendly. Many of thier comercial offerings involve Linux and their monitoring is based on Cricket. I wonder how they (and other Canopy Group companies) are feeling about this whole mess.
"LSD more often sparks insight or provides a novel point of view rather than causing outright delusions. Cocaine and amphetamines on the other hand can cause outright schizophreniform psychosis if taken for too long. This and the correlation between D2 receptor antagonism and antipsychotic potency is why schizophrenia is thought to be a largely dopaminergic disorder. Though it's becoming clear that glutaminergic and cholinergic systems play a significant role."
Could you please translate this for those of us that smoke crack?
That's exactly what I was telling Timothy Leary when I spoke to him the other day, and he agreed completely.
It would seem that you haven't done too much of either.
i'll admit that you lost me after the second sentance - but i assume what follows them is supporting bable in erudite form.
truth of the matter is that your first sentance (and thus the second) are difficult to prove, they can only be generalized,.. approximated (because of the difficulty of assembling an uncontaminated set of test "subjects").
the first sentance is a real hoot tho - i gotta give you that.
" LSD more often sparks insight or provides a novel point of view rather than causing outright delusions."
problem (humor) with it being that ones "novel insight" would often be based on delusional concepts.(and thats not including the hallucinations)
furthermore, the second sentance adds another "variable" - time.. ever pyramid window panes for 4 days?
-v
(p.s. im not *really* attacking your tongue-in-cheek responce to the other post - i just couldnt help saying somthing! =)
IANAL, and this is slightly off topic, (mod me down if you must, but it is interesting SCO related material I haven't seen here) but I found this little gem, which could could spike SCO's guns even if they won:
>>For instance, did you know that, because SCO filed its initial Complaint before it registered its copyright, it's therefore limited by statute to recovering merely $150,000 for any infringements? There are several such Aha! moments awaiting an assiduous reader of this analysis.
Anybody know if this is true?
My rights don't need management.
How much you want to bet it's niether SCO nor Script kiddies attacking, but a good ol' slashdotting?!?
/.)
I mean, if they are hiring "pattern recognition" experts to determine if code has been copied or changed, a good and proper slashdotting sure has a lot of similarity to a DDoS attack.
I figure, just by reading what those SCO people release to the press, they not only have trouble distinguishing truth from bull shit, but couldn't tell a slashdotting from a real DDoS attack. Soon, we'll get a press release that there must be IBM spies inside SCO, because everytime they have a press release, their website starts being "attacked" within hours of the release (about the time the story hits
For those who describe their systems as 'boxen', do you order multiple 'boxen' of corn flakes also?
Translation:
Encountering Police while zooted on cocaine is: Scary
Obvious responce: run like hell
Encountering Police while looped on stamps is: Scary
Obvious responce: wet pants laughing
Have you seen Goodman's paper from last year?
"The serotonergic system and mysticism: could LSD and the nondrug-induced mystical experience share common neural mechanisms?" J Psychoactive Drugs. 2002 Jul-Sep;34(3):263-72.
A bit wacky, but a good read if you're into behavioral neurobiology...
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
DOS attacks are the internet equivalent of standing outside someones home playing heavy metal at 140 dB.
Obviously you missed the whole heavy metal thing. Standing outside of someones home playing heavy metal would be about picking up chicks (most likely the daughter of the family who's house your serenading). The SCO/DDOS equivalent would be something like driving around in a drunken stupor taking mailboxes off their posts with a baseball bat (or something equally annoying).
Quack, quack.
The tactic of associating peaceful populations with the antisocial or criminal acts of a few militant people is standard behavior in international politics. Politically, it plays really well to one's own crowd to say "the others are evil terrorists, therefore we are justified in 'protecting' ourselves by any means possible".
We don't assume that Microsoft endorses or orchestrates DOS attacks against Linux sites when attacks occur against Linux sites. Similarly, we shouldn't tie DOS attacks against SCO to the Linux community. People who are launching DOS attacks against anybody are just uncivilized script kiddies. If they happen to be Linux users as well, that's incidental.
DOS attacks on SCO have nothing to do with Linux or the Linux community. SCO's legal attacks on Linux are outrageous and unfounded, but the Linux community is responding to them with facts and will, if ever presented with a real legal challenge, respond in court.
...SCO can't be seen as an IT company* without a functioning web site. ;)
Discalimer: yes, I know they're in the lawsuit business now. By reading this post, you acknoqledge that all joke replies are to at least be original.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I work for a small logo design and creative services shop in a Canopy Group office building (emphasis: we're not a Canopy company, we just rent office space here, because the combination of connectivity and nice space makes sense). A call to our ISP verified last Friday's attack was real; the effects were undeniable. We lost the ability to get in or out of the network for much of the day.
That might not seem too significant, until I mention the fact that all our sales happen through the web -- not to mention most of our project management interaction with our customers. Hence, we were paralyzed pretty well by the attack. If Friday was going to be a typical day, we lost $4000-$5000 is sales. Not to mention lost money due to lost productive time on projects.
I don't know how SCO's bottom line was hit, but that was ours, and because we don't have huge padded bank accounts or support of shell-game investors, we really can't afford that.
Not to mention that the bad publicity is real. Sure, some of us here understand the situation and understand the childish folks who undertook the attack only represent a small portion of open source contributors, users, and supporters. But our VP of tech had some negative things to say about them.
Moral of the story: yep, DoS attacks hurt innocent bystanders, even some slashdot fanboys who dislike SCO's tactics as much as the next guy but spent too much time unemployed last year and really don't want their current employer hurt. And transitively, DoS attacks hurt the rep of the Open Source community. Really. If you're one of the people inclined to do something like that, think twice.
Tweet, tweet.
But this begs the question: Uh... what have they been doing lately to prevent it? It seems every day that we keep hearing about DOS attacks on them... For crying out loud... If it's broken, FIX IT!
No wonder they weren't making any money on their UNIX sales.
Karma: Non-Heinous
Sorry, I'll stop downloading P0rn, the net should speed back up in a minute.
SCO is the owner of the UNIX Operating System Intellectual Property that dates all the way back 1969, when the UNIX System was created at Bell Laboratories. Through a series of mergers and acquisitions, SCO has acquired ownership of the patents, copyrights and core technology associated with the UNIX System. The SCO source division will continue to offer traditional UNIX System licenses to preserve, protect and enhance shareholder value.
Darl, I can tell you're lying... your lips are moving! Care to list exactly which patents SCO owns?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Go to sco.com and take a look at the employment section. It says "There are currently no job openings at SCO." I wonder why. Aren't they going to be focusing on updating their products soon? Shouldn't they at least be hiring some movers to help clean out their stuff after the big fire sale once they are crushed?
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
See original BSD code.
Like there were people in Berkley in the 60's - 70's and not doing LSD?
Check out my life
For a moment when I read the title of the story I thought SCO was claiming rights to good ol DOS :)
IOException - Can't Speak
What IBM should do here is be absolutely ruthless.
Don't just go after The SCO Group, go after
Canopy. IBM has more patents than God has
shoestrings. They dug up four in short order that
were being violated by SCO. Don't stop there.
Find a patent for every product or service that
every Canopy backed company sells. Start filing
injunctions to stop them from selling all
products and services that they produce.
So come on, IBM:
Show them what you can do to threatening little
companies when you *really* get angry! I'll buy
a new Thinkpad if you do!
That probably confused you just as much, but I hope that makes the gibberish make sense.
I know that a lot of people are pissed off at SCO for all of their rampant BS, but DOS attacks do not do jack squat to "help" Linux, Open Source, or otherwise because it makes Linux users look like a bunch of criminals, which is exactly what SCO wants people to think.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
L-Dopa is not dopamine, but a close relative, which gets turned into Dopamine by a couple of enzymes, one of which is in the brain. The reason that you give L-Dopa instead of dopamine is that you have to give high doses to get across what is known as the blood-brain barrier, so it can get into the brain tissue. Dopmaine in the doses you'd need to give, will make you incredibly sick, L-dopa doesn't do this to the same extent.
Therefore by giving L-Dopa to parkinson's patients, you can get the L-Dopa into the brain, get it converted to Dopamine, and let it work it's magic.
The hosting company is Center 7, which is partially or fully owned by Canopy Group. Canopy Group is the largest shareholder in SCO.
BTW, Center 7 and Canopy sued Computer Associates recently. They settled for $40 million. Those Canopy Group fuckers are sue-happy pricks. "Contracts are what you use against people you do business with", indeed.
CA says settles Canopy Group, Center 7 litigation
A comment in a recent article here pointed out that their upstream ISP seems to be IBM. I wouldn't want to be the IT guy at SCO who has to raise that issue.
"Uh, hi... is this IBM?"
Yes, it is; what can I do for you?"
"Uh, this is, uh, [edited] at SCO. Someone's DOSing us, and..."
[uproarious laughter from IBM rep]
[CLICK]
Using the holy grail of OSes...
Unbelieveable... SCO is now backtracking on the whole Linux user lawsuit thing... SCO's PR people in Australia are now claiming that there was never any serious plans to sue Linux companies or commercial Linux companies! This in spite of Darl's statement quite to the contrary just a week ago!
Are they really so stupid as to think that nobody will remember what they've actually said up to this point?
Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking