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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.
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%
;-)
Smoking Crack Operation
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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?
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.
probably in one of 2 ways.
1> They will blame it on IBM
2> They will say that since they are known for vaporware, that any derivitive "vapors" belong to them. Then they will start to sue drug dealers and junkies charging them a license fee to to continue smoking their crack.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
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?
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
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.
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.
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
That probably confused you just as much, but I hope that makes the gibberish make sense.