Slashdot Mirror
SCO Offers $250K Bounty for MyDoom Author's Arrest
Performer Guy writes "This SCO press release indicates that they are offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest & conviction of the MyDoom DDoS worm authors. Let's hope they catch them. Not merely because MyDoom is one of the most mindless attacks on our internet infrastructure in memory, but also when they pay up it'll be less cash for SCO's litigation engine."
Thanks to Tin Foil Hat and prostoalex for pointing out links at ComputerWorld and CNET, too. Related to this: stealth.c writes "Bruce Perens has written a letter to the Open Source community, discouraging us from cheering on the MyDOOM virus, as it would falsely implicate the FOSS communities and almost certainly cause the success of the virus writer's mission of discrediting these movements. This letter is also posted on NewsForge and on Groklaw." Unfortunately, with columns like this one blaming the worm on "some ticked-off Linux fan", it needs to be said.
If you're out there, e-mail me. Let me turn you in, and I'll give you .50%!
It's that SCO thinks that MyDoom's source code is owned by them. :)
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Come on, Darl, you HIRED someone to write it, didn't you? An open source Reichstag fire, right?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
$250,000!
How did they get that kind of money?
Oh right...
$699 at a time : (
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor?
American Weblog in London
"Due to low cash flow at SCO, the reward will be paid upon successful judgements in the lawsuits against IBM, Redhat, Novell, et. al."
Well with all the DDOS and extra bandwidth from bounced mail today has been a bitch. Spam filters have been running overtime and the internet has slowed down. Now as much as I don't like SCO over their action this is just to extereme
Most people live in a democracy so why not try ot use tha tinstead of random acts of cyber violence?
Rus
CPanel + Root from $35/mo - 10% off with discount code SLASHDOT
Alright, Alright, I wrote it. I guess SCO will not be sponsoring my defense while they are suing ... me? Wait.. wtf?
Someone needs to do the following:
1. Turn the culprit in.
2. Collect SCO's reward.
3. Give the money to the OSDL SCO defense fund.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
This must be around the amount they've extorted from Linux "licenses".
Vonal Declosion
Linking to (and subsequently Slashdotting) a site that is under a DDOS is unconscionable even if it is SCO! Think of their servers!
While the author's actions are not indicative of the actions of the open source community, it is an easy bet that he/she/them is in support of dethroning SCO and a clear fanatic of everything Slashdot stands for. Unless this is a false DDOS, implicated by SCO, but that's a bit paranoid, IMHO.
A blog like any other.
I think this is an appropriate time to say, "SCO, YOUR MEGAHURTZ HAVE BEEN ST0L3N!!!! MICRO$OFT DID IT!!!" /me quietly whistles and walks away
...payable in worthless Linux IP licenses.
Unknown host pong.
Another opportunity for some great PR from this idiot company.
Bet they were rubbing their hands when they heard about this one.
...350 licenses to Linux.
$250K Bounty
Let's see...
$250,000/$699 =~ 357 copies of SCO/Linux
We do not know the origins or reasons for this attack
Now that is stupidity.
Unless Microsoft have paid their next years dues in advance, I'll wager they don't have it. However, it may be that they know the culprit will never be found.
Message to the Linux and Free Software Community Regarding the SCO Denial-of-Service Virus
Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com> (U.S.) 510-526-1165
Version 2, January 27, 2004.
The master version of this notice is at http://perens.com/Articles/SCO/DOS/
Please check that location for a more recent version. You may re-publish this material. You may excerpt it, reformat it and translate it as necessary for your presentation. You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion.
On January 26, 2004, a new virus became rampant. I have read reports that the virus payload has two purposes: to install a remote-execution back-end of a type commonly used by spammers to redistribute email, and to perform a denial-of-service attack on SCO's web site.
Denial-of-service attacks via virus have been a common trick of email spammers. They were first used to take out some of the anti-spam blacklist sites. Several of those sites had their (non-spam-related) business so heavily disrupted that they closed the doors of their anti-spam projects rather than be attacked again.
The Open Source developers are a target of spammers. We are the creators of most high-profile anti-spam technology. For example, SpamAssassin started out as, and remains today, an Open Source project. The predominant mail delivery programs of the Internet are Open Source projects such as Sendmail and Postfix, and thus most efforts to spam-proof those programs are Open Source as well. This is important, because it gives spammers a reason to defame us.
SCO also has a reason to defame us, as part of their stock-kiting scheme. We have assembled ample evidence that they have lied under oath in court. Such a company would not balk at attacking their own site in order to paint their opponents in a bad light.
Thus, it is likely that this virus has been assembled for the purpose of defaming the Linux developers by spammers, SCO, or others. Your behavior will influence whether or not it succeeds in this mission.
Thus, I urge all persons who have sympathy for Free Software, Open Source, and Linux:
Remember that your actions count. You are ambassadors of our community.
Bruce Perens.
Let me be the first to set up an 'anti-bounty' that will pay $300000 to anyone who can name the Doom virus creator but promises not to tell SCO. I'll be setting up a pay pal account shortly to start receiving donations to this fund.
Paid in SCO stock, no doubt.
Give me a break. I agree that it is unfair for your whole "movement" to look bad based on the actions of one misguided individual. But this position that this virus is a conspiracy to make linux look bad is ridiculous. You really find it easier to believe that this is a plot to bring down linux than that some high school kid who doesn't like sco did something stupid, as high school kids tend to do? I think some people are trying to hard to make their lives and "movement" seem more exciting by adding some drama and intrigue.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
By the time you collect the money, SCO will already be bankrupt. Either that, or they'll apply it to all the $699 licenses you "owe" them.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's the best thing we could do in this situation.
I for one would like nothing more than to see
the whole SCO fiasco and all those who cheered it
on from the inside to go up in a huge flaming
slag pile.
Writing viruses is not the answer and posting
stupid shit isn't either.
Try and use at least 3 brain cells before posting.
(they don't necessarily all have to belong to you)
SCO takes another page from the Microsoft book of institutional intimidation and scalp hunting.
Besides, who the heck goes to the SCO site anyway? SCO already has taken all the good code off their web pages, so why bother? If the security analysts hadn't noticed the code that would DDOS SCO's site, nobody would have noticed its' unavailability.
In principio erat Verbum.
Good Luck
Holy crap man, this virus is driving me nuts. I've gotten over 5,000 emails in the past 24 hours. Apparently it seems to use common first names attached to domains, and I am getting blasted. Virginia Tech has done nothing to stem the tide of email pouring into my mailbox.
I truely dispise this stupid virus and nobody should be cheering it on, because of the swath of destruction it is cutting through innocent victims.
sounds like SCO wants to give this attack as much press as possible
Plus, also the likelyhood that whoever did this will be publicly revered and hated (not liked) by the Open Source community, and blacklisted from getting a programming job anywhere else in the world, most likely for life?
Also, there's the chance of being treated like Mitnick, and charged as a "terrorist." All for the sum of just under $32,000 a year.
No thanks. If I were the worm writer, I'd hope to God that the virus can't be traced back to me. Either that, or I'd move to Iran or North Korea.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Does SCO even have 250K? It isn't much of a risk for them considering they most likely wrote the virus themselves to try and cover for their lack of a legal case.
Problem is that the general public will equate this attack to 'those weird Linux people' and it may have severe consequences if that attitude filters up towards congress in the process..
Regardless of who/what/why, we ( the entire OSS community, since 'they are all the same' ) will feel the most heat from this...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They don't have the money floating around, and even if they did would you trust Darl and Co. to actually pay up?
OT, but I just submitted the story below. Since this is an SCO thread, and -Taco probably isn't going to post 2 SCO stories in a row, here it is:
/. readers! The SCO "litigious bastards" linking campaign has succeeded! SCO is now the first link on a Google search for litigious bastards. (If you try a "I'm Feeling Lucky" search, it'll still go to SCO, but it looks like the SCO site is down.)
:-(, and mirror!
Thank you to all
Congratulations, everybody!
On a side note, simply searching for "bastards" brings up SCO). If Google happens to notice and block it (as in the past), a screenshot is here. Please be kind to my server
This SCO press release indicates that they are offering a $250,000 reward
I want fifty thousand. No less.
Would the Slashdotting they're receiving right now qualify as the second most mindless attack on their infrastructure?
Down in under six minutes, that has to be a record...
Perhaps the SCO software division wrote this virus to discredit the open source movement... Had to be said.
... that needs to be used to cover their selfs in court.
Its funny when a big (well maybe not) company like SCO steels from everyone and then uses that money to try and make a good name for them selfs with at least one person.
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
Nuff said.
SCO Offers Reward for Arrest and Conviction of Mydoom Virus Author
LINDON, Utah, Jan 27, 2004 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX), the owner of the UNIX(R) operating system and a leading provider of UNIX-based solutions, today confirmed that it is experiencing a distributed Denial-of-Service (DDOS) attack. SCO announced that it is offering a reward of up to a total of $250,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual or individuals responsible for creating the Mydoom virus.
(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/19990421/SCOLO GO )
"During the past ten months SCO has been the target of several DDOS attacks," said Darl McBride, president and CEO, The SCO Group, Inc. "This one is different and much more troubling, since it harms not just our company, but also damages the systems and productivity of a large number of other companies and organizations around the world. The perpetrator of this virus is attacking SCO, but hurting many others at the same time. We do not know the origins or reasons for this attack, although we have our suspicions. This is criminal activity and it must be stopped. To this end, SCO is offering a total of $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for this crime."
SCO is also working with U.S. law enforcement authorities including the U.S. Secret Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to determine the identity of the individual(s) involved. Anyone with this information may contact their local FBI office.
The Mydoom worm, also known as Novarg, is a mass-mailing worm that arrives as an attachment with the file extension .bat, .cmd, .exe, .pif, .scr, or .zip. When a user opens the attachment their computer becomes infected and uses their computer with the intention of connecting to the www.sco.com Web site on February 1, 2004. Network security firms including Network Associates and Symantec have already issued software updates to combat this particular worm.
About The SCO Group
The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX) helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses with UNIX business solutions. Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide network of more than 11,000 resellers and 4,000 developers. SCO Global Services provides reliable localized support and services to all partners and customers. For more information on SCO products and services visit http://www.sco.com .
SCO and the associated SCO logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of The SCO Group, Inc., in the U.S. and other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of, and are used to identify products or services of, their respective owners.
SOURCE SCO Group
Blake Stowell of The SCO Group, +1-801-932-5703, bstowell@sco.com; or Payal Patel, or Avi Dines, both of Schwartz Communications, +1-781-684-0770, sco@schwartz-pr.com, for The SCO GroupCopyright (C) 2004 PR Newswire. All rights reserved.
News Provided by COMTEX
.. appears inaccessible right now due to the combination of DDOS attack and Slashdot effect.
Unknown host pong.
Great, have the press release hosted on a site that's alreayd being DDOS'ed, slashdot can't even slashdot it!
Please check that location for a more recent version. You may re-publish this material. You may excerpt it, reformat it and translate it as necessary for your presentation. You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion.
Now I wonder why you put that in there?
I think that maybe SCO wrote this virus to garner sympa "}(}"..~ [NO CARRIER]
after you look in the mirror.
We *know* you paid a North Korean hacker to do it..
It wouldn't surprise me if SCO had the virus written in an attempt to discredit the Linux 'community'.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Robyn Peterson, robyn_peterson@ziffdavis.com, is probably pretty safe to ignore at this point.
From eWeek's (heh) "Online Jubilation About MyDoom's SCO Attack" article:Reactions on Slashdot, arguably the largest discussion board for technophiles, displayed a cathartic wave of pleasure, "Finally a worthwhile virus!" exclaims one poster. While another adds, "So, uh where can I download a copy?" (Robyn here included links to relevant /. comments)
While the person who gets paid to write this for a living (wtf?) ignores that the majority of the +4/5 comments that aren't rated "Funny" are
1) Reminding people that DDoSing is always stupid and silly2) Anticipating this kind of silly article
and 3) yelling at people who post unsupported theories about SCO.
But hold on, Robyn has more to say:
Another Slashdot poster goes as far as saying, "SCO has used past denial of service attacks as 'the dog ate my homework' type of excuses in court." It went on to suggest that "SCO's next court date is in early February, maybe they haven't done all their homework this time," implying that SCO itself released the worm. (Robyn will report next month on the inability of SCO to find evidence because IBM is being a big meanie.)
I know it's an advertising publication, but some people read eWeek and expect some of the things in it to be true. Rather than mention the tangible allegations against SCO with regards to insider trading, lying to stockholders, and inconsistent policies, Robyn reports what he's paid to. And that's fine - a half-truth is not quite libel - but it's kind of disturbing to read.
Bad Robyn Peterson, robyn_peterson@ziffdavis.com. Bad.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
SCO brought it on themselves, they behaved immature and childish and now they're getting an immature and childish retaliation. Someone needs to take both SCO and the virus author out of the playground and give them a good spanking.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
what's the motive behind this reward? sco will never make this money back, seeing as dont have much of a business anymore. unless, of course, you consider suing people a business... oh yeah, this is america.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
It'll be funny when they catch this spamming scum and they're running Windoze.
- A. Coward
Please send the money to my paypal account.
Now gimme ma money mofo!
So is Saddam only 100 times more dangerous than the worm author?
Why do these virus writers always go for the web server? WTF? Honestly capture the flag is kinda cute, but seems so useless. This machine is probably hosted at someones co-lo. Why can't they get hold of the external IP for SCO headquarters and aim there?
Bounty hunter - "So I found the guy who made the virus, wheres the money?"
SCO - "We have it tell us who it is."
Hunter - "Come on show it to me."
SCO - "Here *pulls out wad of bills*"
Hunter - "How do I know that isnt a $100 wrapped around a bunch of ones?"
SCO - "Damn!"
SCO(on phone) - "Bill, we need another advance."
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
When this first cropped up a number of people pointed out that the DDoS against SCO is probably just a red herring to hide the worm's real intent - to act as a backdoor into countless windows systems for the virus writer's real purpose. Given the last analysis I read on it, that purpose seems likely to be to leave Zombie Emil Gateways for spammers to use.
.
While it couldn't happen to a "nicer" company, it seems very likely this virus wasn't written by a "Pissed off Linux advocate" or even a "Rabid SCO hater." The DDoS is probably just incidental to the real payload, serving to deflect suspicion from the culprit.
Yet another Bottom Feeding spammer . .
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
Darl: Ok lawyers, how can we turn this worm into a PR manifest, making us look like gods and the Linux community like Satan worshipers?
....Damn this bong, and my memory!
SCO Lawyers: We can offer a bounty! Yee-haw! Let's offer a bounty, and then have a Twelve-noon showdown with Linus, once and for all!
Random SCO Employee: Umm...guys... You told me to write this worm in November... I just got done with it.
Darl:
How EASY it must be to write a Windows virus.
Step 1. W@R3Z Visual Basic
Step 2. E-Mail it to everybody with subject: COOL SCREENSAVER
Step 3. ?????
Step 4. Profit!
Oh wait... Step 4 should be, WHATEVER YOU WANT!! Because all these viruses ever are is stupid EXEs that people REPEATEDLY open. No matter how often you tell them "DONT OPEN EXE, SCR, PIF, ETC" they will do it. It doesn't even require a security hole! Just a moron to write a program really quick and be the first to 'market' it. LOL
Indeed, some moronic Linux fans are cheering MyDoom on. "Quick, disable your AV software, and get some Windows boxes on the internet!"
Terrific. Too bad the comment was AC... Come on people, how many times do i have to tell you that this worm is a bad thing?. Do I need a sledgehammer or something?
If (cough, cough) this person gets caught, then the name of the virus will be rather ironic.
Someone's system is is using my damn email address in the forged From: header.
:/
I'm with sco on this one, I hope they find the guy, then gimme 30 minutes alone with him and my baseball bat.
It's all fun and games until you start getting 200 bounces a day. It's not bad enough I get 350 spam/day, now this shit.
Make it stop
no doubt delivered to you as 15,923 shares in SCOX...
This one is different and much more troubling, since it harms not just our company, but also damages the systems and productivity of a large number of other companies and organizations around the world. The perpetrator of this virus is attacking SCO, but hurting many others at the same time."
please, how does a DDoS attack hurt companies other than SCO?
This message, and the high reward makes me seriously think that SCO actually released this virus.
The IT section color scheme sucks.
However it may have started, many Linux activists today seem to be a volatile mixture of their political ideas regarding OSS vs. Proprietary Software and a religious fervor that gives them the belief that there could be nothing wrong with Linux and that nothing can be better than it.
Not to mention the fact that even though I know there are some crazy fucks in this country, I highly doubt there have been bombthreats, death threats, etc. I'm sorry, I just dont buy it. In fact, the image I got in my head was that pornly lit headshot between Diane Whats her fuckin newsloser and McBride, her looking 'concerned' and handing him tissues for his little mock tears.
Ie: The media is full of shit. This whole spectacle has been a lie since the beginning, why should we believe anything in realtion to itat all.
In fact, I am almost 100% sure those SCO losers outsourced some Indian programmers, with a lil FUD-FUD-Funding from Redmond, to write the fuckin thing, AND THEN, the PR gang in charge of this fiasco, said "Offer a bounty, it will look grand!!"
Linking to a press release?! The audacity of those slashdot hippies. /. is next on their litigation shitlist.
Get $250k, use money to buy licenses for my linux copies(tivo,etc). Because that would be the worlds greatest slashdot troll.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
The catch-all on my domain email is getting about 2 of these every minute, and has been for the past 20 hours. This is really making me angry, and unfortunately there's nothing I can do to filter most of them. I'm only able to filter the ones that have the special messages (7-bit unicode nonsense and just plain 'test') This virus is hurting everyone; including people who run linux servers who are getting thousands of these emails.
If so, I am calling dibs on naming SCO.
$250K?!?! I'd like to turn myself in! Yep I did it! I am such a bad person for writing viri. Can they Direct Deposit the $250k? Lock me up in a Prison for a year or two? Solitary please. Cause I'm really dangerous. When I get out, my Mortgage would be paid, and I could have the rest invested and making some nice dividends. And best of all Surely DukeNukem Forever will be out by then! 1. Write a DDOS Virus Targeting SCO. 2. Wait for a bounty on you, turn yourself in. 3. Profit! I love rewards for being bad!
Shut the fuck up It's kind of obvious that this is a doing of a Linux user, so please stop writing your pointless letters, no one cares. Heed my advice, and once and for all Shut the fuck up
Seeing as Bruce is considered to be one of the leaders/spokesmen of the Free/Open Source Software Community, he has a responsibility to speak out on issues such as this. Since so many people, organizations, and companies pay heed to what he says, his silence would be considered tacit approval by some.
Additionally, this single worm has the potential to do more harm to the Free/Open Source Software Community than all of SCO's shenanigans combined. evereyone really needs to speak out against this.
They don't want to get DDoSed on the 1st, so they decide to give out a huge reward.
I bet they didn't think about the number of people (not just from Slashdot, but everywhere) that were going to DDoS them just by reading their press release...
Yet another showing of intelligence from SCO.
Jeremy Baumgartner
Which is what makes this press release so...so...strange. We all know that the FBI goes ballistic over this kind of thing. And unless the worm author was incredibly careful, he's probably got federal agents tramping around his bedroom and emptying out his dresser drawers even as I write this.
So why then, is SCO so eager to hand over $250,000 for an informant? SCO's moaning about how much this worm has cost them, but, really, can we take that seriously? I could see if this worm targeted Dell or IBM, or, you know, some company that actually has customers visit their website. But who is SCO selling anything to anymore? It's just a litigation house. What do they care if their site drops down for a day or two? The FBI is likely to be hot on the worm author's heels, so why is SCO so eager to hand over 250 thousand smackers without any clear reason?
When you see spending decisions like this, it's a pretty good sign that a company is being run by bozos. You get the sense this press release was rushed out the door in an effort to capitalize on media attention. But was there any real reason why SCO needs the attention, or why it's in their best interest to part with so much money given that the culprit will likely be found anyway?
So here's my crystal ball prediction: the worm author will be found. But SCO won't pay up. This is all about publicity, and for some reason I don't foresee Darl rushing to sign a check.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
...payable upon the successful resolution of their lawsuit
Check out what the virus targets and doesn't target. It ignores .EDU addresses, as well as a host of other *nix places, including .gov and what not. While we may complain about how this virus makes us look at a whole, at least give the writer a nod for being courteous about the sites he/she targeted. Go on, read it
Anyone worth their while knows that Linux fans don't code anything for Windows unless they are paid for it. It's something called 'taint,' which money readily removes. :-P
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
1.) 250k is a lot, i wouldnt count on them being able to out when their linux case goes bad.
2.) I reject this posters' mentality of not moo'ing and cackling about this DDoS virus for fear that it will give linux a bad rep. People will read the stories and generate their own opinions regarding linux. most people will be rational enough to realize that one small groups opinions do not necessarily reflect the community's opinions. for example, did the US population go and have a huge negative vibe towards japanese after pearl harbor?... err... bad example.... did the US population go out and daemonise the muslims after 9/11... ooh... damn... ok, maybe this poster does have the correct idea here... OH well! i will continue to cackle, for i belive in karma, and i dont care what stupid people think.
... well, actually money that they were going to lose anyway. It's brilliant, actually. SCO is mired in this horrific, indefensible, and losing legal, so why not just pony up $25K of money the market's going to steal from them to look like they're going out as heroes?
It's like a king who's about to be overthrown using the treasury (the people's coffers) to buy himself some nice clothes to get overthrown in.
I have to say, if I were to bet, I would bet it is some ticked off linux fan. Since this virus is really just meant to hurt SCO, it's either someone who wants to discredit the OS movement or some single child-minded linux fan.
I'd bet on the latter, simply because there's not that many "linux-haters" that are individuals and child-ish. A company like MS, as dirty as they can be, I don't believe would engage in this kind of criminal behavior. Basically, virii are written by individuals for the most part, and I don't think an individual has much to gain from attacking OSS.
In all likelihood, it *was* some ticked-off kid. Get ready for more blurring the lines of linux=illegal hacking=evil subculture=virii makers type articles and opinions.
i can't hardly believe that... i almost died laughing when i read it. this shit is like wwf wrestling.
The RIAA made the virus to take the heat off from them for awhile.
You, sir, are an idiot. Has your rabid hatred for SCO clouded your ability to reason? It's not just SCO that is getting hurt by this virus. Every government and corporate oragization is wasting resources, manpower and money getting this damned thing out of their networks. Infected computers are spamming the virus all over the place, putting additional load on already spam-beleagured mail servers.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
And I want my fecking money!
No, hes a leader/spokesman of an orginization with an agenda, he does not represent the entire community. No more than Howard YEHAW Dean represents the democratic community.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
PC World doesn't even mention Linux - San Jose Mercury News leads with SCO slant - and so do one-third of the headlines of the first 27 newslinks found through Google at about 8:30 tue, east coast time. About half of the rest of the stories mentioned Linux in the body copy.
Looking at the timing, IAOTO that the source of this latest river of publicity is Darevil and/or SCO related. Bet the author is NEVER found - despite the FBI being called in a few hours ago.
Hmmm - Didja read ?? - SCO sues IBM - in the News again, must be something to it - Big company picking on those little California Linkux or something people - or perhaps it's another script kiddie. Lots of confusion generally in the great unwebbed. And perhaps that's the goal ??
Finally - isn't the trigger date for the DDOS in Feb ??!!! The timing again seems be to ensure continued press coverage for weeks and perhaps even a legislature can be found - hmmmm ??
Gee, I wonder who is funding this?
and for the same amount too!
Bruce is wrong.
there is no way that one person or even a small group can create a worm that takes down linux or FOSS.
Anyone who thinks so is demented.... And I guess that means you Bruce.
Honestly, who the hell cares about SCO anymore?
SCO themselves have blown the shit out of their own case..... We all know its a pump and dump...
cheering on a boston tea party is only possible because the legal system of the US has allowed this mess to get as far as it has publicly.
Ultimately it has only served to let the general public know there is an alternative to Windows and Mac.....
The idea of blaming the whole of FOSS for the expression the worm writter communicated is totally insane, but so what if some cheer for the statement...
ISN'T it really just a statement of telling SCO to either put up or shut up?
What the legal system has so completely failed to do!!!
When was the last time you read the declairation of Independance Bruce?
Does SCO honestly think this will make them look good in the eye's of open source programmers? Or are they doing this to make their name more predominate with Amature or new computer users whom have never heard of SCO, in order to get support?
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is that your position? Why should we care because it's only SCO?
What about the time my coworkers and I have spent getting that stupid worm out of the government and corporate networks? And before you winge about out of date virus definitions, the virus hit before ANY definitions were available from anyone.
Pull your head out of your ass and try looking at the larger picture.
And these virus writers deserve to have a bounty on their heads. They belong in jail.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Unfortunately, with columns like this one blaming the worm on "some ticked-off Linux fan"...
What self-respecting OSS programmer would write a worm for Windows?
Inconceivable!
but I can't help feeling its kinda funny.
Anybody see the details? That $250k is made up of Linux IP licenses and SCOX stock...
2004-01-28 01:25:51 Litigious Bastards Linking Campaign Successful! (articles,caldera) (rejected)
Oh well, at least I got a Funny score, but I meant it to be Interesting....
wait till they see the slashdotting!
Whats the award gonna be for everyone hitting their site and bringing their server to its knees?
"500 dollars for the head of every linux junkie who loaded our web site!"
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
I'll do better than previous offers, I will offer the counter bounty sum of $10,000,000 to anyone who finds the virus writer and promises not to tell SCO*.
Anyone who wishes to donate to this fund send me funds at wenNOdoy@SPAMconsolidated.net.
Also I'm setting up another fund as a way of saying thankyou to the virus writer. To keep things simple you can also send donations to this fund to wenNOdoy@SPAMconsolidated.net.
Further, I've started a general just give me some damn money fund, it can be found at wenNOdoy@SPAMconsolidated.net.
*Only collectable by homosexual venusians who have been residents of Mars for at least 10yrs and submit there claim and get it successfully verified by tuesday 3 weeks ago.
I'm the guilty, i'm the author of http://www.doom.org/, it's mydoom.
Has anyone found an analysis showing that the attack in this virus would be set off before that?
Has anyone found where the attacks are originating from? (what country[ies])
What does the virus install on the affected machines? or does it simply open a port?
Is the attack only pre-programmed (as most analyses seem to indicate), or is the high open port allow for remote control/execution of the attack?
Do the infected machines communicate with each other either directly or through some other medium (eg: irc)?
Something doesn't add up about this. SCO is reporting that this virus is attacking thier servers now, but I have yet to find an analysis of the virus that indicates that this would happen, or that the attack would occur before Feb 1.
Could someone post a link to a relatively complete analysis of the virus and it's workings?
I'd greatly appreciate it.
And why would some fringe linux headcase prevent the worm from mailing hotmail, microsoft or msn accounts? Oh that's right THEY WOULDN'T!
...by the RIAA. You get it through Kazaa, it discourages people to download music (or at least potentially wrecks havok on the users computer), and it gets automatically blamed on linux nerds (most of all which support file sharing) because it blocks www.SCO.com.
I gotta give the RIAA credit...brilliant, brilliant work...
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
especially knowing that the $250k comes from ill-gotten gains from using mafia-like lawsuit tactics that even insult the mob. Though taking the money and then donating it to the Linux Defense fund or the Linux fund (the development portion) would help SCO's arch-enemy and thus not a bad idea.
better yet is if the author of the virus also inserted a disclaimer asking if the user ok's the use of their connection to help bog down SCO's servers by accessing their website at a scheduled time (a whole lot nicer than calling it "Denial" or an "attack"). Of course, it doesn't even have to be a virus...it can be like the Seti@home or folding projects. SCO@home.
Much deploring also. We all deplore this deplorable act. Keeping the fight against SCO in the high road, that's what we are doing. No cheering. No laughing. No smiling even.
You, there, stop jumping up and down. And remove the worm from the datacenter. Now. Master Bruce says absolutely no worms in the high road, so please...
It's being distributed in binary form, without any source code. Clearly it's not FOSS.
I would never endorse an Internet attack against anyone, but attacking www.sco.com doesn't affect SCO's systems at all. Rather, it kills their web host systems.
/dev/null all the "you sent us a virus" messages.
Besides, this hurts us Unix/Linux people just as bad as SCO and Windows machines. I have spent a good portion of the last two days writing Spamassassin rules and setting up Snort to monitor this stuff. Just for good measure, I went ahead and wrote a cycling shell script to stop all traffic going to www.sco.com, and it checks every 15 minutes to make sure with their nameservers that the address hasn't changed, or iptables changes.
Not to mention the phone calls coming into the call center with regard to bounces! I finally just designed Spamassassin rules to
Click here or here.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Contrast Linus with Perens, one is an annointed God in the open source pantheon, the other is a self-appointed loudmouth for the open source movement.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Bullshit. It's possible, but unlikely that someone pulled this stunt to defame the community. It's likely that this shit was pulled by some dickhead who thought it would be cool - you know, the kind of dickhead who has been cheering this virus on Slashdot?
This "open letter" is nothing but transparent propaganda - trying to paint the Open Source world as perfect, free of idiots, fighting against all the evil forces in the world. Newsflash - there are idiots everywhere. Deal with it, and keep the bullshit to a minimum.
Hand me those earmuffs, Mr. Lucifer. Chilly, huh? You just never know about the weather around here.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
..and the real thing that the worm is doing is OPENING THOUSANDS OF BACKDOORS ON WINDOWS MACHINES FOR SPAMMING, DDOS, WAREZ FTP'S, IRC TAKEOVERS and for other not that nice uses that are really not of any intrest to the normal linux user or advocate(spamming being the number 1 moneymaker here). though the whole ddos part of it might have been added in to it just for kicks, though certainly it seems to be a great way of pulling the attention away from more intresting things like that it spreads through kazaa(and leaves an open backdoor).
besides, sco's website seems largely unaccessable anyways(even without the ddos having yet to start).
the general public(an average computer _user_) doesn't have a clue about this though, nor does it have a clue about who sco even is, the people where this kind of publicity would be bad are currently quite clueless about the whole thing anyways so I wouldn't worry that much - for them it's just another email annoyance.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Oh, wait: I meant to get this link in there, but hit submit too soon:
MiMail Virus Attacking Anti-Spam Groups
That's right -- the last time around, these guys were attacking anti-spam projects -- basically members of our community. I'm willing to believe Bruce Perens' hypothesis that this is just more of the same, except indirectly.
I DID IT! it was me!
When SCO realizes that it's a Linux user who's caught whoever it is, they'll simply sue said user for the amount of $250,000.
Fuckers.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
His assessment of the situation here was about as dead on as your assessment of his gender.
He, like most other people, is only reading highly modded posts; they are, have been, and always will be the only ones that truly matter (that's the beauty of slashcode). The people who post are not really that key to the process; everything gets said at least once - EVERYTHING - and most things get said far more often than that. What DOES matter is the moderation, and that is what best reflects the intelligent sentiments of the slashdot community.
And judging by that standard, I very much agree with the creator of this thread. The highly modded comments which had a non-"funny" qualifier were generally NOT condoning the worm, and that is very important. So important that it should have been taken into account in the article.
There must be a problem here:
;)
1) The virus author(s) have failed to provide any source code.
2) They must know something about a Closed OS such as windows.
3) They obviously love SCO as much as the Open Source Communitity
The only thing that points to an Open Source author is that they aren't charging any fee for this virus!
I know it's an advertising publication, but some people read eWeek and expect some of the things in it to be true
I wonder who exactly are those people who expect some of it to be true. I have some nice bridges in various American cities for sale and we are also handling the pre-sale of some real state in the Moon and in Mars for Nasa. So if you know anyone who believes in articles whose main source of information are Slashdot comments, please ask them to give me a call.
Check out the new website located at http://www.linuxstolescocode.com, read the page very carefully! Don't be too quick to hit your browsers back button (hint,hint!)
Website about Linux Stealing SCO Code, read the page very carefully, don't be too quick to hit your browsers back button (hint,hint) http://www.linuxstolescocode.com
I think SCO did this. I think they put up the money as a front to look eager and they wrote the virus to look like they are being hurt by the big bad open source community again.
And even if the Linux community wasn't getting a bad reputation over this, I'm still not sure there would be anything to cheer about. I mean, who really visits the SCO website anyway (other than DDOSers)?
Maybe one or two really lonely/bored/pathetic people won't be able to get their daily scoop of SCO goodness on February first; big deal.
I think it means very little that the worm launches an attack against SCO. The primary purpose of this worm, like the Mimails that preceded it, is the wide-spread distribution of a zombie network for the purpose of propagating spam. You see, spammers hire programmers to do this coding for them (read up a bit on Mimail and spam) in order to help their spam biz. While the hired programmer was at it, he probably threw in the SCO bit for shits and giggles. Or maybe he's a younger programmer and just kind of immature. Either way, the spammers (the people commissioning the construction of the worm) don't care.
To me this sounds like the most likely scenario -- remember that spam and viruses are linked. The SCO thing is just throwing people off track.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by (malicious) stupidity. I got $100 says this was some u83r-1337 linux-lovng script kiddie who's all about getting those SCO bastards their due - I think it's incredibly self-important and shallow to think that somebody would go out of their way to defame the OSS movement this way.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I can't access the SCO site (go figure), but look at this article:
9 ,0 0.asp
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,11447
Uh... How can SCO confirm they're experiencing a DDOS if it doesn't start til Feb. 1?
Just wondering.
SCO has at least as much motivation as anyone to launch this thing. A real geek attack on SCO would go way beyond a mere website DDOS.
If someone is running a pump-and-dump scam, they sure don't want people talking about the facts of the case, SCO's lack of revenue, the "IP license" fiasco, "death spiral" financing, or Darl's lies. The logical solution is to create a diversion. These are desperate people. Follow the money.
The Reichstag fire is what I thought of immediately
Yes that's the obvious parallel and the right conclusion IMO.
SCO's two pronged approach includes the court of public opinion in addition to the U.S. judicial system. It suits SCO and their Redmond Muppet-masters to disparage the Open Source community, which is why we see pejoratives like "Communist," "Hacker" and "Anti-American" emanating from them at every opportunity. It would suit them perfectly for each of those terms to become synonyms in the common vernacular.
At the very best, SCO is capitalising on this Virus by offering the reward for their propaganda, knowing that it will cause headlines. At the very worst they developed this virus themselves for the same purpose. Either way SCO will come out of this looking like victim.
Conversely, all that an independant Virus writer could hope for is a temporary interruption of SCO's Internet access.
It's obvious who has the most to gain.
I got that list and laughed. Notice that it not only excludes .gov but also .mil (US military) addresses. Trying hard to avoid the feds from getting involved, maybe? But it also excludes *icrosoft and hotmail??????? NOT A TYPICAL LINUX GEEK. Sounds to me like a _icro_of_ employe_ perhaps? Or the type of person who would rip their own clothes and then go run to the teacher. "Miss Smith, Johnny grabbed me and pushed me" (said with a whiney voice) Other interesting exclusions were IBM, Berkeley, and *BSD.
Miss Cleo on Groklaw and Yahoo Finance boards is advocating that the open source community band together to offer a bounty as well. She thinks making the bounty payable for information leading to the arrest would be most beneficial, since it would mean our bounty would pay before SCO's and help shore up OSS from the beating SCO intends to give Linux supporters over this.
Can Slashdot or OSDN create a Paypal account for this?
Now give me my money
NO SIG
Here has most of the answers you seek. It opens up a port to allow someone to hijack the system, and if the date on the system is Feb. 1 then it attacks. So it is possible SCO could recieve a few attacks from people with their dates wrong.
Scene - the virus writer's parents' basement
Script Kiddie #1: OK, dude, like, I got the, y'know, latest version of, like, Virus Creator, dude.
Script Kiddie #2: Swheeet! Dude, like, run it!
Script Kiddie #1: Fuxor! Like, I clicked on it, and, like, it didn't go!
SK2: Dude! You have to, like, double click! Lamer!
SK1: STFU! I know that! Fag!
SK1: Uhhh, like, it's doing sumthing. Oh - kewl! It's like, installing stuff.
SK2: Shweet! Man, this rox!
Virus Creator: Virus Creator Wizard - page 1 of 5 - Do you want to install a backdoor? [yes] [no] [help]
SK1: Shweet! Yeah, let's set up my army of zombies! Huh-huh-huh!
Virus Creator: Virus Creator Wizard - page 2 of 5 - Do you want to install a spam relay? [yes] [no] [help]
SK2: Dude! We can, like, make money! Do it, dude!
Virus Creator: Virus Creator Wizard - page 3 of 5 - Do you want to install an HTTP relay ? [yes] [no] [help]
SK1: WTF? (clicks help)
Virus Creator: This lets us serve PR0N through your zombies - click yes and we will let you have the password to see some of it.
SK1 and SK2 (together): DUDE! SHWEEET!
Virus Creator: Virus Creator Wizard - page 4 of 5 - Do you want to DDOS somebody ? [yes] [no] [help]
SK2: Yeah!
Virus Creator: Virus Creator Wizard - DDOS setup - Who do you want to DDOS? [enter URL here]
SK1: Who should we fuxor? School?
SK2: DUDE! If you fuxor school how can we look at pr0n during class? (dope-smacks SK1)
SK1: OW! Fag! OK, uhhh, dude, like, the RAII?
SK2: YEAH! Fuxoring with our MP3s!
Virus Creator: Virus Creator Wizard - URL "www.raii.com" not found - try again [enter URL here]
SK2: Fuxor!
SK1: Dude, like, what's something with less letters, man?
SK2: SCO?
SK1: Yeah! FUXOR JOO, SCO!
Virus Creator: Virus Creator Wizard - page 5 of 5 - Virus ready - click here to email [ok]
SK1 and SK2 (together): SHWEET!
In other words, I think the DDOS against SCO is incidental to the real purpose of this virus - which is to spread spam. Like as not the choice of SCO was just because they are in the news, and to shift the blame to somebody else.
www.eFax.com are spammers
So how is it that SCO is supposedly already feeling the effects of the DDoS from the virus?
Viruses are bad...we all know it. No matter how much we hate SCO this kind of thing still isn't right. Most of us can agree on that as well. But what is so wrong about us having a little fun and joking about the situation? If people are really loading the virus to participate than that is wrong, but the majority of us here are just joking around. The world probably wouldn't even know until you columnists start whining about it. You cry about how we are just making the situation worse but it is YOU making it worse by drawing attention to it. If you don't like what people are saying that is your opinion. Hell I encourage you to post here about it, That is what /. is all about. But don't take our joking comments and write a story about us saying that we are morons. In my opinion that makes you appear to be one of them.
-Chris
The person that released this virus would have done it if SCO was around or not. I'm personally glad that they decided to attack SCO instead of a website that I frequent, but the extra internet traffic will hurt everyone. The news stories make this out to be an attack by a Linux user on SCO, what evidence do they have? It could just as easily be an angry investor that bought their stock at $20 and lost 1/4 their life's savings. They must have Windows computers to figure out how to write the worm and test it, so why must the author be a "Linux Hacker"?
If the virus is traced back to SCO, they won't look like a victim... they'll look like a bunch of lying, scheming scumbags. Hm, wait...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
From the original SCO press release as of 1/27/04 10:12pmEST: "SCO announced that it is offering a reward of up to a total of $250,000".
It could be as little as $.03. I'd rather see "no less than" instead of "up to". It will be a bit more honest.
Hallowed are the Ori
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Good point. These types of comments are what makes Slashdot what it is. It's just a time-killer, not too different from watching the news on TV. Misinformation, ridiculous opinions, a few smart people, and a lot of stupid people.
"This SCO press release indicates that they are offering a $250,000 reward for information leading to the arrest & conviction of the MyDoom DDoS worm authors. "
Is that 250,000 in cash or SCO stock?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
357 Licenses to SCO/Unix - 256K /should/ ever need - 256k * 2.5
Bounty on your head - 256K
Memory in the computer you programmed this worm with - 256MB
All the memory you
Having every damn member of the OSS community hate you - priceless
Lets be real here. SCO doesn't have $250K cash to pay you... its all going to lawyers.
I advise you to get the $250K cash. It it was a check, it won't be worth the paper its written on.
when they'll offer double the reward after MyDoom.B!
Are they going to have enough money to do that after all the court-cases? Aren't they supposed to be running out of money at some point too?
Better hope they do well in the courts, for their sake
Insert Sig Here
Well I think Symantec has it wrong because Virginia Tech is getting lit up right now. I've already had 40 today. I feel bad for the others who have hundreds.
Afterall, it was and is their platform that continues to provide these hacker assholes a global stage for their virus creations.
Just think -- all those lawyers around SCO coming up with a ploy to play the victim. Its working quite well for lots of other groups.
Seastead this.
He should have a followup article on the Linux communities fascination with posting anal pict ures in ASCII, too.
"...today confirmed that it is experiencing a distributed Denial-of-Service (DDOS) attack" ???
:) He wrote the virus and released it via the 2.6 Linux kernel. ;) Actually, the way this virus works... via fast spreading and a timebomb makes you wonder if they were reading this article
Funny, www.sco.com comes up just fine for me. How are they "under a DDoS attack" that isn't supposed to happen until Feb 1st?
The whole press release was nothing but more PR crap with wonderful quotes like
"the SCO Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOX), the owner of the UNIX(R) operating system" and "We do not know the origins or reasons for this attack, although we have our suspicions."
It must be Linus.
...a "ticked-off Jodie Foster fan"?
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
I'm not ticked-off at all!
Note to the virus author
If your best friend suddenly gets rich and says he stumbled upon a quarter million dollars, run, and run fast.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
So is it okay then to call a pizza place and order
10 pizzas for the SCO people and make them pay for it?
. . . can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/27/mydoom .spread/index.html
The title? "Experts: Vicious worm 'Linux war' weapon"
My suggestion is to use CNN's feedback system and let them know what real "Linux-fans" think.
Mr. Perens, I greatly appreciate your work and contribution to software, and I hope you take this as constructive criticsm...
We can't show this to others. This notice is for OSS nerds, not for public consumption: You correctly point out that this virus is not supported by the community, but then you go on and talk about how wrong SCO is etc. That's not good. You're mixing two separate issues, sending the wrong message to the public.
If this virus is not related to the community, then there is no reason to use it as yet another avenue for bashing SCO. If we are to take "the high road" we better leave it to the courts to decide if SCO is comitting "fraud," or has a "stock-kiting scheme."
IMHO, the message should be clear and simple:
This virus was not written by, nor is it supported by the OSS community in any way. In fact, the OSS community is totally against such actions and spends a lot of effort in making the internet safer from these tactics. As far as the legal procedings related to SCO, we trust that the judicial system will address them fairly, and we offer our full cooperation to both sides as necessary. End of story.
Although there is no evidence that you're a Linux user, by doing this you're giving the Linux community a bad name. Please stop this foolish and childish attack. Open Source and Free Software are a force for good and you're not helping people to see that that by doing this.
Please remember the following.
1) No one likes or respects you for this.
2) It's illegal.
3) It harms GNU/Linux's image as the good guy against SCO's obviously bogus case.
4) It makes the community look bad even though 99.999999% of us aren't foolish enough to engage in something like this.
In short you're accomplishing nothing by doing this.
SCO will pay for what it's done (either in fines or with jail time), by LAWFUL means. I urge you to stop the attack by whatever means NOW.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
SCO web site did not collect such amount of hits in the last 10 years. I have a theory. They wrote the thing the get in the news. Currently those are the only ways they have to be in the news since as a technology company, they're not only dead, bu they start to stink.
I take offense to the term DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service). I don't know how you could describe SCO as providing any kind of Service.
Screw'em! I wonder how many folks came out against the Boston Tea Party for the same reasons! Things have run amuck in the good ole USA. Redemption comes at a price of blood and fire -- and DDoS!
...stupidity that idiot posters on Slashdot do. This is a GREAT website and, quite obviously, garnering a reputation for being a *nix punk site.
;).
Sadly, I can't help but think that people like Rob Limo and even the Cmdr himself give fertile ground to such idiocy through their unmitigating and constant presentation of all things M$ as inherently evil even though other companies (such as the 'giving OS products for free to schools' from earlier today) have done and continue to do the same things.
Let's keep Linux above the immorality and un-ethical behavior of other OSes and companies because the community that is Linux is beginning to get a bad name... God knows Linux is so much better in most cases that the facts are all one needs
Loading...
It suits SCO and their Redmond Muppet-masters... That's an insult to Jim Henson! Heck, that's even an insult to Frank Oz! Please refer to them as "Nefarious puppet-masters" in the future; it conjures up more of an image of Bill Gates with his hand up Darl's... er... back.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
After giving SCO information, the informant would just be issued a summons to appear in a civil proceeding, alleging that he infringed upon SCO's intellectual property.
SCO will claim that they used "information" when putting out the request for information, and therefore hold the copyright on "information." Since the guy gave them "information", he's guilty of copyright infringement.
Microsoft will step in and patent "information" and claim that they were using it long before SCO was.
The open source community will get pissed and say that information is public domain and freely available to everyone. The government will disagree and say that it controls all information.
Then, a creature will destroy the Spirit rover and the discovery of life on Mars will make everyone forget about information altogether.
I can't help but notice the preachy, almost soviet-style editorialising in the two ./ stories about this worm I've seen so far. I have also read Mr. Perens letter to the community, which contained some good points but nonetheless basically requests that noone praise this attack.
./ to say "it couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch of total *&^$ing #$%^s." This whole 'let's not say anything positive about this to protect ourselves from the ignorance of the masses' stance is just as bad as any other form of censorship.
Look, if you support free speech, including SCO's, then you must also support the freedom of people here on
In fact, I almost think I detect the unpleasant stink of... yes... it is... spin! PR! Image management! Media manipulation! Once we get into that game (i.e. modifying/suppressing the truth to support our own agenda) then we may as well just run for President and get it over with, because we're on the slippery slope.
So let's not deny, suppress or otherwise fuck around with the truth. Worms are annoying. SCO is bad. Many people here are happy that, if anyone was going to be hit by an unpleasant DDOS attack, it was SCO. Eat it, Darl McBride, and may it last a good few weeks.
Read Pynchon.
Unfortunately, with columns like this one blaming the worm on "some ticked-off Linux fan", it needs to be said.
Hmm. what other assumption did you want them to make?
What Linux user would admit to being enough of an expert at Windows to write a virus for it? It's a little outside of most Open Source Contributor's area of expertise, isn't it?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
We crossed the point where posts from Slashdot are news themselves! Pretty soon cnn will be nothing but a filter on Slashdot stories.
No kidding. A real attack on SCO would spread Darl's email and SCO's source code all over the internet.
"The reward will be handed out as 350 prepaid SCO Unix licenses. But you better hurry, because after Feb 1, due to the price increase, you'll only get 175 licenses." ... OK Feb 10... 20 ... Mar 1? ... OK 700 licenses before Apr 1 ... Each with a nice picture of Darly ...
You are either
A) A troll, and lying.
B) Stupid, for not posting anonymously, or
C) Stupid, for not taking the $250,000
If I knew who was doing this, I would rat them out, so I could get the cash...maybe I'm just a greedy asshole.
Hunter - "So I found the guy, you need to pay me."
SCO - "Great who is he."
Hunter - "I can't tell you who the infringing person is, but you have to pay me anyway."
SCO - "Why would we pay you if you won't tell us who's infringing."
Hunter - "ditto"
It seems that every time there is a story on slashdot linking to SCO they are suffering a DDOS attack. I can never seem to get through.
I would like to salute the ashes of american flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.
SCO and their Redmond Muppet-masters
Well, at least Darl & co have hand up their asses.
AND Bill's getting his hand dirty!
See, think positive...
You can't take the sky from me...
You don't have to be a fan of either Linux or open-source software to have contempt for SCO's legal actions. For all we know it could have just been someone looking to test out their new multi-platform exploit, using SCO as a convenient target, since they seem to be behaving as if they are immune to the repercussions of their actions.
I mean, this is the Internet we're talking about. Kooks and hotheads abound here. It was only a matter of time before someone up and decided to take hostile action against such a morally bankrupt company.
I really don't get why SCO is doing this? It's like the kid being picked on saying, I'm going to find the kid who hit me in the head!!!
Best Community for Gaming and Gadgets!
would spend the money on their products and make it better. But I guess this will have to do until they both decide to do so.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
O. J. Simpson has offered an award for information leading to the arrest of the real killer of Nicole & Ron!
Shun it, ignore it, cheer at it, but don't ever apologise for it unless perhaps if you created it. Submissive, misguided fools.
While Bruce raises a good point, and none of us in the open source community should be praising the attack on SCO's systems, it is stated that this attack does more harm to the internet as a whole than it does to the SCO as an entity. So let's think about that for a second - if we're worried about the internet as a whole, shouldn't we be more concerned with the root cause of this - Windows? It's Windows systems that are being infected and distributing the worm, as well as performing the attack on the SCO website.
I suspect someone in the Microsoft PR department is wiping the sweat off their forehead. While it's truly all their systems which are at fault, nobody seems to notice. Let's hear it for Windows Security!
Should we really be so sure of anything at this point? If you read both Perens' letter and the eWeek article, they say almost exactly the same thing about the Linux community. The difference is that Perens jumps to the conclusion that the worm was designed to discredit the community, while the eWeek reporter jumps to the conclusion that some zealot made it. Neither opinion is any more provable at this point.
It is certainly quite possible that the zealot idea is wrong, but no one really knows yet. If 'we', the community, make statments which turn out to be false, that also reflects badly on us.
...but if I find the moron who does this (yeah, right), I plan on paying off a few bills and giving the remainder to the ODSL defense fund.
This sig no verb.
Perhaps Darl can join OJ Simpson on the golf course to look for the "real" virus writer.
Okay, maybe this is completely off the wall, but does anyone see a relationship between SCO and Gollum? Nobody likes either of them, the once held power but lost it, and now they are resorting to foul play to get it back. Now SCO must resort to being tricksy to reclaim their precious business model. It would be just to slay them, yet pity should stay our hand. Many that live desereve to die, but many who die should have lived. In the end, SCO will fall into the fires of Mount Doom, but they may yet have some small part to play in the tale of linux.
SAILING MISHAP
As much as I would like to see this SCO thing finished for good (with Darl in jail), I can not see any justification for blaming this on SCO.
Why would he go to the trouble of creating a worm when additional lies will do? After all he shows no end to the limits of his imagination, and has shown that he prefers to litigate rather than create.
Hell, does SCO even have developers any more?
Be realistic, just as there are millions of "nice guy" linux users who use the OS for the right reasons, there is a significant portion that want to use linux to destroy, steal, cheat, whatever.
So I hope you aren't serious in your attempt to lay the blame for this at SCO's feet. Your letter shows either an incredible naivete on your part, or an unwillingness to face reality.
Just an AC's opinion, typically worthless.
John Waalkes
that *BSD is dying... ;)
The press release gives email and phone contacts for SCO! Not that I'd actually recommend anybody emailing or calling them just to say "Ha-hah!" in their best Nelson (from the Simpsons) imitation voice... but some people might anyway.
If a man is kicked repeatedly by another man, should he enjoy it when his aggressor is kicked by a third?
Is the suffering of an evil, a good?
Does the death of a hated friend end the friendship, or the hate?
The ______ Agenda
they will demonstrate that the user once used Linux and that the attack is anti-American, communist and terrorist Linux IPR destroyers who are at the root of all problems ....
...
The *real* cause of the problem is Microsoft but
I think this offer pretty much confirms the rumor that SCO released the worm itself. Why else would the be so ready and willing to offer such a huge chunk of their cash reserves for a simple DDOS attack?
Maybe, but he is, quite literally the guy who defined Free Software in concrete terms, and in addition codified the way in which we as a community are bound to each other. He's obviously thought long and hard about the issues surrounding this community, and he was doing it before the vast majority of us. That means his voice rightfully carries a lot of weight.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
Of course, SCO knows full well that they will never have to pay it, since they commisioned the virus from one (only?) of their developers.
[/tinfoil hat]
Seriously, this is just more from the SCO FUD machine, in light of their inability to supply IBM with the documents as directed by the Court. Look for this to become an excuse at the next hearing as to why they still can't come up with the goods.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Well, it beats eating noodles.
Ed search for him, and contact me in the swordfish.
From the article at eweek ...
Editor's note: A word in this column has been modified to emphasize that a connection between anti-SCO sentiment by the Linux community and the MyDoom attack has not been proved.
Hoorah for editorial conscience. Take notes, Slashdot.
In the good old days before everyone started whining to the Internet cops, people used to clean up their own messes on the Internet. If that meant giving someone the old Usenet Death Penalty or blackholing them then so be it. SCO has proven they're assholes so they need to be DDoS'd off the Internet.
It was not a "bridge for sale" joke but a "journalist taking Slashdot's comments at face value" joke. Anyway you are right, I could have easily (and on topically) avoided the cliche by offering "SCO Linux licenses" instead of bridges...
Bounty offering is their innovation!
The rest are fair game.
*wink*
How long until SCO starts sueing the individuals whose computers are infected with the virus?
Unfortunately, with columns like this one blaming the worm on "some ticked-off Linux fan", it needs to be said.
So, I wonder if this person thinks it wasn't some ticked off Linux fan. I don't mean this as a troll, or flamebait.. but seriously, do you think some kid somewhere just up and decided to attack SCO cause they're a high-profile target? Not likely.
It's only 358 licenses. They'll probably get more sales than that out of the round of publicity.
The only people who could gain from this is SCO and MS.
Think for a second what would linux gain from this than just
discredit for them selves where as MS and SCO gains a lot.
SCO is loosing their battle on linux fud war. MS is loosing badly to linux in server and desktop
Hmmmm.... Not dumb enough to get the virus but I would still like to do my part. Should I just hammer at sco.com starting on Feb 1?
kidding!
i always love a good comedy.
I sent Robyn this email. I figured witty slander would be funny but not as helpful as trying to point misguided efforts in a reasonable direction. My brain is tired after a long day at work so it is no work of art but I didnt want to shy away from sending something that I feel somewhat strongly about.
/. user opinions regarding SCO.
Cheers,
-BJ
Hi Robyn,
I read your article regarding Slashdot and
It is quite obvious that there was little to report and therefore published what might be more sensational, yet almost completely insignificant findings.
If your dream in life is to do a great job as a reporter, I strongly encourage you to pursue significant truth as opposed to what appears to be propoganda-like article conjuration.
Based on the article tone, I would even guess you are friends with someone at SCO or have a common interest in attacking communities that disagree with the nature of SCO's IP "management".
If you are interested in reporting about "underground" technology, I can easily think of a dozen untouched subjects that could have a devestating impact on the security and reliability of the Internet. In exchange for a story that fairly reports the nature of Slashdot (not all good yet not all bad either), I will provide you with information that I am confident you will find desirable.
Kindest,
-BJ
Ah Ghostse, nice to see you again. Bring us another one of your fine Ghostse trolls. Of course you'll need to replace goatse.cx with goat.cx.
Are you sure the virus is just meant to hurt SCO? Note that like previous variations of this virus, it installs a back door (specifically the ability to execute supplied code and port forwarding). This same functionality has been used by spammers in the past (and indeed, the DoS portions of previous versions have targeted anti-spam sites).
As the saying goes, "you must be new here." The Linux fanbase is not alone in its share of zealots and childish behavior.
Who said anything about MS? Bruce's comments mentioned SCO. And spammers. That's it.
Google for "gobbles". There are plenty of folks who would love to take a swipe at Open Source (or specific groups under that banner). And why not. They're just as tempting a target as anything else that gains notoriety. After all, what would an individual gain from attacking... say... Microsoft?
You're on the money on that last bit. This will hand SCO more ammo to fling at the OSS community. And SCO will undoubtedly do their best to get it in the press and in front of Congress (which in turn is fodder for the unlikely possibility that this is SCO's own doing - they'll skuttle their own company for a buck, why not their own site?).
So what if this is not the work of a ticked off kid? Who would do this?
Again - this is a variant of previous malware. It is possible that someone got mad and just did the basic changes needed to vent their frustration. Or it could be from the same source as other recent attacks. And that source is undoubtedly some part of the spammer "industry" / community.
So why attack SCO? Bruce touched on one possibility - discredit a community that's been working hard to make spammers' operations difficult to maintain. Others have suggested it is an attempt to distract people from the virus' real intention - providing another fleet of zombie proxy machines. I've toyed with the idea that attacking SCO may appeal to the very ones who are usually cleaning up malware and the virus author hopes that these individuals would just let this one slip by.
In short, there are plenty of possibilities. And while the lone malcontent is still a very valid one, it is by no means the only likely candidate.
I seriously can't believe that there is anyone in this community who would be so immature as to consider this script kiddie anything but an internet terrorist. Sure, we all love to hate SCO but get real. SCO's a joke and we know it. Continuing to bad-mouth this already dead company is embarrassing.
As for the script kiddie. I don't care what the outcome is of his actions. He's a script kiddie and should be beaten severely, no exceptions for them.
It's an embarrassment to the OSS community that there is any perceived or real connection between Open Source and script kiddies. I was pissed to read on CNN that this action was considered to be executed by Linux Zealots.
The work that is done by Open Source software, FSF, OSDL, et al is something to be proud of because it is not only quality work, but work that is based on some pretty decent moral foundations. To make any jesture of congratulations or even acknowledgement towards this kind of behaviour erodes against all the ground that has been gained over the years.
We do not have millions of dollars available for a spin-doctoring campaign or damage control PR, but there are many who don't like OSS who do have millions to spend. Don't give them any ammunition to work with.
the funny part is that it is OBVIOUS that a linux user did not write it.
a linux user would NEVER go near Visual Basic... even if it meant to save his/her life. This is a outlook script virus written in VB.
It's a script kiddie that runs windows that wrote it.
just grab a copy and look into it, it aint no linux virus, it's a lame modification of previous outlook worms.,
there are people called "TROLLS" that post whatever crap they can to get a reaction. You likely have been trolled. Plus, Slashdot is the LAST place you should look for good tech discussion. It's a geek wankery site, nothing more.
But come on, DDos'ing one of our own? Who has a beef with Bruce? Own up to it now and the beating will only be very painful rather than extremely painful.
While others have said what i'm going to say and my posting will amount to little more than a drop of water in a river...
Cheering on the writer of this virus just makes us all look bad. And gives SCO ammunition (whether real or imagined) to press its case.
This is very bad timing considering SCO's lobbying of Congress. All we need is for Congress to have this virus and SCO's inflamatory words in mind at the same time, to cause the Open Source movement headaches.
I hope someone catches the childish bastard(s) that wrote this virus. Never mind SCO's childish antics. It doesn't help that someone stooped to their level (or lower).
--- I was far from home, and the spell of the Eastern sea was upon me. -Lovecraft-
it pains me to see so many people in the community cheering on the attacks
A lot of these people are FUCKING TROLLS you fucking idiot.
Nefarious puppet-masters
Or, if we still don't like Metallica, we can call them "Nefarious Master....Master.....Master of puppets!"
Fellowship 9/11
I can see it now; the $250,000 reward will be paid out to the informant in Linux licenses in the form of coupons for your choice of linux distribution...
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
... SCO probably doesn't even have $250K spare to its name.
INSERT INTO comment VALUE('Doh!') WHERE user='you';
I'll change it to DDOS /.
Linux user != Community member per definition. How is that defined anyway?
Linux user == just that, a Linux user. A person.
Just like a Windows user is just that, a person who uses Windows.
I'm so sick of this guilty by association fallacy BULL!
Thank goodness for the parent poster. A civilized religious person! Good sir, perhaps you can help me with a religious question. I am a homosexual, like most on this site. I am involved with a wonderful man who happens to be Jewish, as so many homosexuals are. My problem is this: my favorite sexual activity involves having strips of ham put into my cum-drenched anus, whereupon my partner consumes them. Us "ham eaters" jokingly refer to this as the "Anal Cobb Salad". Aren't we wacky? At any rate, my Jewish partner refuses to consume the ham, he claims it's against his religion. Can you give me some guidance on how we can reconcile our disparate points of view? You seem like a nice person, I'm hoping you can help.
You hit the nail right on the head. McBride is the Hitler of the Information age. Like the Nazis, SCO is trying to use the scoundrels amoung us who would turn on their bothers to save their own neck.
Just like the Jews, the OSS community is being feed into the digital gas chamber.
Its time to take a stand before its too late! Never again!
I wrote the code of which you speak!
Dick Turb0 l0ves SC0
They should add a bounty too! What better way to say the Linux community treats such DoS'ing lamers as outcasts?
Also, doesn't $250K sound a little steep for SCO? Aren't they seriously running out of money?
One would be motiviating... the other, not...
What if the author is in a country where it isn't illegal do do what he did? Further, what if it turns out that putting a bounty on such a false arrest *is* a crime in that country? Wouldn't it be cool if SCO inadvertently created an international crisis?
In response to the viciously incriminating story at http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/27/mydoom .spread/index.html
in which they imply that this must've been an act of Linux Fans that are frustrated with SCO and Microsoft. I would encourage all of you to give CNN editorial feedback on this story as well. Text of my feedback follows....
I'd like to comment on the sheer journalistic irresponsibility of this article. The article implies that this worm must have been authored by a Linux fan, just because it attacks SCO and the Windows operating system. The fact of the matter is, SCO has many enemies and there's no evidence suggesting that the Linux Community had anything to do with this. There isn't a Linux Advocate in existence that would condone this act of terrorism, myself included.
Second, the fact that the work exploits Windows is immaterial. Windows is an insecure operating system with security holes large enough to fly an MD-11 through, and the exploits in Outlook are so well-known and have gone unrepaired for so long, that the methods used are practically CS 101 level reading at just about any educational institution.
This is just one more example of how CNN continuously fails to verify its facts before running a story, and also of its incredible bias. Journalism is supposed to be neutral reporting of the FACTS, not of some authors biased opinion of what he or she THINKS.
Does that mean I have to take these pictures off my web site now?
It's funny, laugh....
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
If the writer of the worm is such a linux fan that some of the articles present, why doesn't the worm spread leaving it's source code behind including the GPL? :-)
Maybe SCO outsourced it to india...
After that 'other DDoS' -Transparent and blatant LIE. What could be next. Really makes me sad, but then again I use MacOS
At this point shouldn't you?
If I turn myself in am I ANY less culpable than them
--Shaddup and support your local PBS station Plan for it
This'll probably be redudant, but if it were to come out that this worm was SCO funded, my heart wouldn't exactly stop. They've done similar, less drastic things to discredit the community and portray FOSS developers as evildoers. Wouldn't it be all that much more fulfilling if it were the case?
ascii art
Sorry if this is a bit off topic. But how exactly is this worm spreading through email, is it AGAIN an outlook issue, or does it affect all email clients? Alien.
I just checked it, sco.com is up! I even hit refresh a couple of times to make sure (and to increase the load of course..). There's nothing illegal about us all visiting that site repeatedly, is there? It's called civil inobedience, IIRC.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Would you turn in one of your, uh, colleagues?
Which would prevail, the promise of $250,000, or the certainty of ostracism or worse from your fellow virus writers?
I admit I don't understand how virus writers think, but they don't seem to be particularly money-driven. On the other hand $250,000 will buy a lot of computer equipment and junk food.
Very curious about people's opinions and observations. Post anon if you need to.
Let's hope whoever does catch the authors, and collects the bounty, dontates the money to the SCO Defense Fund
...all the linux licences I could buy with that... almost enough to pay for this room...
I got $100 says this was some u83r-1337 linux-lovng script kiddie who's all about getting those SCO bastards their due
Hmm...who also seems to know how to code a Virus/Worm. Doesn't sound like a script-kiddie to me. This person coded the virus/worm for the Win32 platform. Sounds like this person also had experience coding for Win32 also. I call BS on your statements. Would some u83r-1337 linux-lovng script kiddie be able to or be motivated enough to install Windows (heaven forbid), install proprietary compilers (MS Studio, VC++, VB, etc, or similar), etc and go to the effort of coding and testing this virus? Script kiddie? Linux lover?
Let's get something straight: it's unlikely anyone in the open-source community is behind this worm. It's more likely this is the work of a spammer cashing in on the discord between these warring factions.
Then again I could be wrong. This could be a big scheme by Bill Gates to collect e-mail addresses, after which he's going to pay everyone who clicks on the attachment $100.
is each site linking to the SCO release gonna get hit for copyright infringement, or only for conspiring to a DOS attack ?
in any case, slashdot by itself is a nice DOS, pity it doesn't last.
This is not a signature.
I don't have any links.
Jeoin
A ticked off linux fan may indeed be motivated to write such a virus. No one should implicate a FOSS fan just yet, but no one should play dumb - that doesn't exactly play to the FOSS's movement's credibility either.
A motive theory:
This thing apparently has a back door. What better way to spread a virus, than to make it a virus that many people might *want to get*?! "It attacks SCO? Cool!" So some sysadmins don't get their virus definitions updated quite as quickly. Etc.
So maybe the SCO attack is just a ruse for rubes. Rubes who are allowing back doors to be installed on their computers, or on computers they should have protected better. So maybe there will be a phase two.
Just a random thought.
the virus writer turns himself in? does that mean he gets 250k? or maybe... instead of going after him... SCO will.. HIRE HIM! They'll just call the 250k a sign on bonus.
ok.. so heads you lose tails I win. right?
I think Parens sounds a bit defensive. He is publicly reminding all of us to watch our manners, like he doesn't really believe we can be trusted. Maybe he is worried that one of "us" did it. Whatever. Don't tell me what to cheer on. Daryl McBride has tried to extort money from me. He has lied about me and my colleagues. He has said, in effect, "I don't give a damn what any of those Linux people think about me." If one chooses to deliberately step beyond the bounds of ethical and legal norms the way McBride has, then what kind of treatment does one expect in return? Gratitude?
I don't care who wrote this worm. McBride's stupid reward and the silly trade press aren't going to get me to care either. Here's how it works in the real world: If someone turns himself into my enemy, and takes many steps to hurt me, I am not going to be too upset when some minor misfortune befalls him. So what? That is all that the glee expressed on Slashdot amounts to. That is not the same thing as saying the worm is a good thing. Get over it.
I'd love to mod you to -1 karma whore, just for the laugh! ;)
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This has NOTHING to do with Linux or OSS and I'm so sick and fucking tired of people trying to say "don't cheer this type of behavior on" or "this makes linux look bad". Shut the hell up! Stop being so freaking concerned with Image and worrying about Linux uptake. I could give a crap if Eweek, CNN, Fox news and every other jackass of a moron tech "journalist" says a Linux hacker did this. So what? Think the US government is going to shut down Debian over this? Think IBM is going to dump Linux because of this? Who cares if they do? Linux and OSS software were doig just fine thank you very much before IBM, HP, and Novell wrapped their greedy little hands around them. SCO will be dead sooner or later and quite frankly even with them around Linux isn't going anywhere.
/. would just ignore all this crap. God dam I sick of reading about Ipods and SCO. Moving fucking on already! *smashes laptop to pieces over my head*
Stop hitting the fucking panic button every time SCO issues a press release. It would REALLY help if
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Why would slashdot even bother posting this? This is the best virus of all times.. don't try to spoil it..
What's next? There's a virus DDOSing sco.com, now are the writers gonna mailbomb their servers with pictures of goatse? They ought to, because not only is Darl the spitting image of goatse, so is the guy that wrote this to make OSS people look bad.
[Strong Bad] Oh, ho ho ho... (devilish laugh) [/Strong Bad]
Oh, and speaking of goatse... if you haven't already heard (who hasn't), the CX domain registry suspended it a couple weeks ago after a complaint was filed. Looks like the trolls will have to find another shock site... personally, goatse really isn't necessary when you could send somebody to a clip of Dancing Monkeyboy Ballmer or a pic of Darl himself.
--Z
It would be nice to see someone offer a $250k reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Darl McBride!
Probably they'll give you 10,000 shares of SCO stock and tell you it will be worth $250K when they win their lawsuit against IBM and take over the world. Er, unix.
Sadly? SCO produces nothing valuable. It's only source of revenue are frivolous lawsuits. Hasn't their stock been going up because of this?
Why didn't the dotcom bubble burst for SCO?
This virus bastard is harvesting as well as all the other stuff. I have an email address I just created, and only sent to my family. This morning I got the virus email to that account. About an hour later I got a "TEST" email - it said "this is just a test". 40+ Spam's since then from tons of different zombies.
I'm going to disable the account for a while and hope the 500 error goes somewhere. SCO is somewhat entertaining because they are powerless. This virus sucks.
They will only pay when convicted. This might take at least a year after capture at which time SCO lang gone.
Your $250K will be an unsecured claim, worth zip
Help fight continental drift.
Far from being damaged by the attack, one group of companies is likely to benefit from it: anti-virus software vendors. In a conference call with investors held to announce its quarterly earnings, Network Associates Chairman and CEO George Samenuk said his sales force would jump on the opportunity presented by Mydoom to sell more security products.
... nice to have a new attack this early in the year," Samenuk said.
"It's
article at:
http://www.sfgate.com/
$250K would sure pay a lot of open source developers for a few months.
I hate SCO too, and I'm eagerly awaiting their (legal and financial) self-inflicted demise. However, this sort of attack will naturally create tons of sympathy for SCO in the E-Week/CNN/Forbes community, and will go to suggest that OSS/Linux users are indeed indecent little crackers - an image we should like to avoid in the 'mainstream'.
A Ghandi-esque response to SCO will be more powerful than an AlQaeda-esque response. We need to make it clear that Linux users are not criminals - we need to turn this buffoon in to clear our collective name
Murdoch Q. Malone (P.I.)
Its already in the wild; it has the directions it needs. The only thing catching the perp would do is help stop them from activating/using the backdoor.
A blog about stuff.
good point.
o yea....as for the diapers thing.....politicians go bad the moment they become politicians unlike diapers which tend to have a longer shelf and use-life.
people keep using Windows and Outlook even though every few months we're shown once more that both have all the security of an open barn door.
Not really. A system is as secure as the person using it (with admin/root privs, of course).
Frankly this could have happened to any unix flavor with the right setup. It's not that hard to create a mass mailer in unix anyway (especially with sendmail/mail/whatever_you_use shell commands). Just get an idiot running unix to open the executable attatchment and you're on your way to mass mailer fun for the whole family!
I've cooked up a little monitoring script in Perl that graphs the uptime of www.sco.com. Now you can watch Mydoom in action. Check this out.
That "bastards" search on google is hilarious. I've posted a screenshot at http://musicalcortex.com/google-bastards.png
G-Force music visualization
After negelcting to tell him he was fired and cutting off his pay, they stole some poor, lonely code developer's Red Swingline Stapler and pushed him way over the edge. Somehow, he'll end up sipping margaritas with their reward. Teach THEM to hire guys who mumble like Milton.
it was darl@sco.com or was it bill.gates@msn.com
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Yeah, until they yank the check out of reach, yell "Psyche!" and sue you into oblivion for IP infringement (it doesn't even matter what for, anymore, they'll think of something, and amazingly, it'll seem even more absurd than all their previous claims).
1. Release virus to DDoS SCO
2. Go to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison
3. ???
4. Sue your "girlfriends" for damages
4. Profit!
The attack on SCO is a useless outrage but the reaction can be many times worse than you imagine.
It hurts because the attack itself is futile. No one cares about SCO's crummy little corporate billboard, least of all SCO. They have admitted to being on the way out. You can't hurt SCO more than dead, so this attack can only help them by lending undeserved public sympathy. Some people without a clue might even buy into SCO's propaganda about the free software world being out to get them instead of simply ignoring them till they die.
We will learn the truth of this when they catch the 13 year old who has the Windoze skills required to write the virus. Real free software advocates and programmers have much better things to do than use M$ computers to screw the net and SCO. The worst would be for Microsoft to have bought an agent provocateur who will say all sorts of crazy things when caught.
Peren's and other's Richstag fire fears are well founded in the result of previous worms. Is it a co-incidence that Bill Gates stood up the other day to promise us all a bright sunny spam free future if only he could specify the way email works? I doubt it! Previous Microsoft born diseases have been used by major ISPs to further enfoce the comercial software world's artificial distinction between "servers" and "clients" on the internet. Ports have been blocked to prevent normal services, such as email, html, ftp and others so that only scofflaw P2P applications can function. I fear that this silly worm will be used to ban free software and re-work email so that it becomes the corporate controled mess that some companies and governments want it to be. I'm afraid now. Are you?
Powerful intrests are striking back. The "In Soviet Russia" and other nasty trolls are doubtlessly printed up by gangs of paid PR drones, but CNN does not write about them or Steve Barkto. The real war of words has been launched against free software. They are going to try to make it look like free software "echo boxes" have created terrorist like fanatics who are causing real harm.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Groklaw reports that MessageLabs has identified the worm as originating in Russia. http://www.messagelabs.com/news/virusnews/detail/d efault.asp?contentItemId=733®ion=america
Not likely coming from U.S. Linux enthusiasts at all. Just Russian entrepeneurs and a red herring.
So I'm gonna sue YOU!... oh wait.. i'm not SCO, hell, I'm not even a vulture! sorry.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
And don't give me that crapa bout lightwaves being diffused by gasses in the upper atmosphere at angles differing by wavelength!
This is only a press action. SCO might even take their systems down for longer than the attack runs, just to up the damages. Actual damages are irrelevant because SCO has no customers through their website. Nearly all of their customers are locked into their OS through one crucial proprietary app.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
In related news. Daryl Mc Bride announces that Sco is suing the authors of the mydoom virus as it contains code that Sco owns.
I've cooked up a little monitoring script in Perl that graphs the availability/ping response time of www.sco.com. Now you can watch Mydoom in action. Check this out.
Linus WMD, my ass. This particular incident is trivial, but marks the beginning of the real war of words that will be followed by more repressive deeds.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
``They're going to have a lot more trouble in a few days,'' said Craig Schmugar, a virus research manager with Network Associates Inc.'s McAfee division, referring to Lindon, Utah- based SCO. Personal computers whose clocks are set wrong are probably responsible for the attacks on SCO, Magallanez said. Such PCs with incorrect clock settings are probably less than a half of 1 percent of all infected machines, Schmugar said.
'Victim' will be the kindest thing you will say about SCO when IBM gets done with them.
Dawn of the Dead
chris.belthoff@sophos.com
Prolly SCO wrote it to blame Linux users and to take attention away from the trial
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Obviously, it's ~360 Linux licenses.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
> The "In Soviet Russia" and other nasty trolls are doubtlessly printed up by gangs of paid PR drones
Twit, in a site that's full of complete crackpot loons, you are the king of the hill.
It gives SCO free public attention and makes it look like they are actually threatening enough to Linux users that retaliation occured. This *might* make them look more credible to some folks who would say, "if they are getting attacked by malicious Linux users, then maybe there is some legitimacy to SCO's claims". I dunno, the timing and blatant attack pointing to SCO seems a tad convenient to me. Who else stands to benefit from a virus like this getting caught at this stage?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
This worm appears to be a lot more functional than DR-DOS ever hoped to be. Of course, if Caldera claimed that the worm writer illegally expanded upon DR-DOS then they might just want the writer's identity so that they can sue him/her.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I already have two Linux licenses for a whole lot less money. Hit the bookstore. Lots of Linux manuals have a publishers edition of Red Hat and Caldera in them. Since SCO is renamed Caldera, there should be no way they can get you for using it. Be sure to read and follow the EULA.
I have a 2 publishers editions, one of 2.3 kernel and one 2.4 kernel. There should be no way they can demand more money for using it the way they sold it.
There may be a legal challange for having the Red hat copy that came with the book. I guess I'm going to have to hide it until the SCO case is over.
One copy makes a great SAMBA server and the other one is a great desktop web tool.
The truth shall set you free!
Check the financial history. A good place to start is by checking the stock symbol SCOX. They got Microsoft onboard. Remember? SCO is a MS puppet to attack the open source community. MS can't do it directly but $10 million is a good start.
Remember the phrase "Follow the money"
The truth shall set you free!
Weekend spent writing virus to DDOS SCO?
10 years in prison for being a terrorist.
Promise from SCO to pay bounty for capture?
Worthless.
I don't want to start a rumor here but I heard that it was to be paid in Microsoft Coupons redeemable for software.
I did it.
public final transient String president = DUBYA;
Who modded this bullshit up ? goatse ranting informative ?
...is a virus that adds an entry in every computer's hosts file that points www.sco.com to microsoft.com ;p
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
If just one ultrapragmatic corporation decides to avoid doing business with SCO because it seems risky, that's a beginning.
If two corporations ditch SCO, that's a trend.
{insert boring Alice's Restaurant riff here}
I'm sorry, but being FUDed by an illegal assault isn't too bad for SCO or too good for SCO. It's just right.
for a company that is pulling a last-ditch effort to prevent bankruptcy they appear to have a fairly sizeable amount of cash left over for headhunting.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
this whole thing is a classic psy0ps exersiZe. /. community not ONE of you came up with the source of the trouble.Oh, I've read a lot of real smart (score 5) posts but out of the whole not
400 billion dollars it cost you to get spooked.
The timing couldn't have been better because the
*nix fans are arguing with the m$ fans, and out of the whole
1 (one) has come up with a dead target for this worm.Interesting.
$250K is just SCO encouraging the creation of more viruses that DDOS SCO, lets hope they offer another $250K next time a virus creates a DDOS on SCO.
Didn't they already refuse to pay Novell the royalty fees owed for this year? Why would they pay a mere individual, who has no power to force payment aside from a costly protracted legal battle, and SCO might not be around by the end of it.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
did SCO change their business?
Just look at their website's topic:
"SCO | SCO Grows Your Business"
are they selling these <www.penisadd.com> now?
Maybe I am unique, but this feels like SCO is talking the law into their own hands somewhat, offering up money so that a criminal can be caught (even though it can be seen as harmless, companies loose a lot of money on this kind of crap). Isn't catching criminals up to the goverment? Or is the SCO mindset that they are suppose to run the show, just like they try to run the UNIX show?
Call me crazy, but I just plain don't like SCO.
Does this mean I can put a bounty on my brother for shutting off my computer? I'm thinking a hefty $5 million bounty would suffice.
This is a VERY clever troll. Bravo, Sir!
Wow how many rewrites did it take before you assumed your sesquipedalianistic prattle meant anything?
would possibly have written this. Does it run in wine?
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Excuse me but just because you disagree with what I have to say is not reason to mod me down "overrated" when its only rated 1.
benna
nt
Because the author is SCO.
;)
Now how's that for a conspiracy theory
Bounty Hunters. We don't need their kind.
That'd be service as in a bull servicing a cow.
Full write up http://www.math.org.il/newworm-digest1.txt "I have played with the date, etc, but still no activity directed toward www.sco.com. It did die after 12 February, but gladly resurrected when the date was set back prior to that. " Seems like the worm dies after 12/02/04 and as of yet isnt attacking SCO.COM
you know i am goign to post this on my account and everything because i really want someone to read it. in the past two days the slashdot groupthink has gone from 90% "fuck sco im glad there getting hurt" to 90% "virus writers are evil i ahve to work a few extra hours to clean up my improperly administered network" . fucking hypocrites. whats the point in hating something so much, like down to your very core, if you dont turn slightly evil in the process?
sure its not "right" but its fucking sco. i seriosuly doubt weither you people really hate sco or if you can even really hate things. its part of being human to get pissed off and wish bitter death upon your enemies in any way possible.
if they slander linux, insult torvalds, insult us all - dont they deserve the same "respect" in return?
dont even bother quoting nietzsche "lest thee become the monster" because, well maybe someone who is not you should become evil. AND WE SHOULD BE THANKFULL that we didnt have to make that sacrafice. is it wrong to route for evil if its the enemy of your enemy?
i would think not, but slashdot.... seriously just fuck you all. wheres the fun in hating sco casually?
its just liek the MPAA. hate them till LOTR comes out on DVD. then youll all suck some nice MPAA cock to get a copy before the others. its almost like no one takes this shit seriously or you've all grown up and sold out. or i take it too seriously. who knows. at least the virus has some positive effect on the world, unlike most.
excuse my freedom french.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Oh, look, this here nigger stole my car. Let's go hang all them crows by the neck!
Anyone feeling particularly black today?
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Excuse me for supporting Mr. (Score:0,Troll), but doesn't he raise at least one valid point?
It's not like this is the first time Outlook and all it's features additional to mailhandling (which mostly is usefull only to spammers and virii-writers) causes complete havoc on the internet.
You'd think by now, Microsoft should have turned of all scripting and activex-support in their email-client to avoid all of this happening again?
After all, I can view HTML mail in Mozilla, Opera and Pine for god's sake. And still I have to admit no viri/worm/trojan has ever infected my machine.
So call him troll if you like, but he did (even though maybe in a flamefest fashion) ask the question that should be asked:
Why the hell is this email client still the biggest source of viruses on the internet?
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
I, for one, am willing to donate upwards of $150,000 US Dollars to SCO's legal fund.
Mr McBride and the media in general- stop calling MyDoom a worm, I know it sounds more dramatic and "computery" than virus, but VIRUS is what it is
see here and elsewhere on the web
That's hilarious, thanks old chap for a good laugh at work.
There is no point in treating the bunch of liars at SCO like gentlemen! You can not rest on high moral grounds while McBride uses every available means to extract money from you. This is just bad business tactic. You will end being right with the leech on top of you!
It is more important to kill SCO than how you do it! Let the dude put down the SCO website and claim that themselves or somebody else did it.
if i ever needed to feel more disenchanted w/ the online world i would be hard pressed to find a time other than now. who created this virus and what their motives are could not be further from relevance. conspiracy theorists would have us pointed towards a dark, clandesteine plot devised by MS to discredit linux, others would have us say that another dark subculture w/in linux created the virus to attack an 'enemy' (one who really represents no logical threat). this should all be deposited firmly in the 'rumours of war' department and not be respected by any rational thinking human being. look. there is no proof or evidence of anything. avoid speculation and remember that a very small handfull of people or a single individual is responsible for this act. no conspiracy exists. and if any lesson should be learned is that we need to review how and why this can occur within the framework of some of our most ubiquitous technology.
two towers because you don't like things that are rectangle-shaped.
We really need an i18n version of slashdot: it took me nearly a minute to figure out why are we dragging LOTR into this. Then I realised that LOTR's not the only thing which had two towersLook, Darl wants spammers to use SCO software - this is why they paid them to write this, we look bad, and all the reward does is launder the money.
Little does he know that a) they now have his email, b) if they had to use a UNIX-like operating system they would probably also choose Linux, c) just what does he think they will use all the money and zombies for?
Disclaimer: this is intended as satire. I use Windows, so please don't sue mr. macbride. (are you really female and married to a big mac?)
- - - Non Caffeine Drink or Drink Error
I bet when he gets turned in they give him $750,000 and don't press charges for making them look like the victim.
...take lamers off the internet.
Seriously, there have been enough of these viruses lately that they even make the NATIONAL news all the time. You have experts (on said news shows) saying that people should install and keep their antivirus software up-to-date, not to click on attachments...BUT DO PEOPLE LISTEN?
The internet is not a right.
No antivirus software installed Mr Bloggs? Buh bye internet.
Double clicked on a zip file, and THEN OPENED THE ATTACHMENT??????????? Buh bye int....no wait, just put a bullet through his head, remove his (frankly retarted) sperm from the gene-pool.
Extreme? Maybe, but I've just blocked 8000 copies of this bastard since last night, and I only run a small mail server. My machine's load is WAY up from usual...arse.
I am NaN
Darl Vader: "I want them alive! No disintegrations..."
I was the person who posted the anonymous comment the writer of the eWeek article quoted "Quick, disable your AV software, and get some windows boxes on the internet".
I can only assume that the writer had his sense of humour surgically removed at a young age, it was intended as a joke, and I'm astounded that it was taken any other way.
I mean, it got modded +5 (Funny), so it was obviously a joke, right?
Listening for the sound of the coming rain...
Mi-cro-soft is pulling your strings.
A intermediate-grade script kiddie finds the source to a virus that does three things: (a) spread, (b), DoS a particular web site, and (c), set up the victim as a zombie. He's interested in (a) and (b), but too lazy or too unskilled to cut out (c). So he changes the DoS URL to litigious bastards, makes a couple of social engineering twiddles (changing the body text, putting the cargo in an attached .zip file), and sends it on its merry way, not caring at all what holes it opens on targeted machines, so long as it DoSes SCO.
Of course, the bottom-feeding spammers don't mind that there are newly-vulnerable machines out there...
Just a theory. Occam's Razor suggests you are more likely right than I.
This is not my sandwich.
Must be someone working on the WINE project then ;)
Philip
Signatures are broken
The Reichstag fire is what I thought of immediately, as well. And please don't bother me about Godwin.
While it is certainly possible, perhaps even plausible, that Microsoft/SCO hired a trojan author to put together MyDOOM, it is far more likely that some SPAMMER subhuman filth did so.
Consider:
1) Spammers hate the free software community at least as much as SCO pretends to (remember, SCO doesn't hate us, they view us as prey. There is a difference between killing something to consume it and killing it out of hatred. Their masters in Redmond hate us, to them we are just meat.)
Why? The free software community has given them the most headaches, writing the best SPAM filters (that are being deployed by ever more people and ISPs), organizing the most effective attacks on their businesses, exposing the sub-humans themselves publicly, and so on.
2) As others have noted, this is a perfect diversion. While the free software community is getting all the heat for supposedly "attacking" SCO (and SCO is milking it for all it is worth) the SPAMMERs are quietly hijacking millions of shoddy Windows PCs (whose security is now orders of magnitude shoddier) to send out their latest penis extention and viagra ads.
I think the SPAMMERs saw a golden opportunity to kill two birds with one stone (give their nemesis a black eye and expand their powerbase of hijacked PCs), and SCO is only too glad to lend a helping hand.
It is possible that this is the burning of the Reichstag. However, I think it far more likely akin to the War in Iraq: diverting attention away from the real issues at hand (Al Q'aida, Healthcare, Eroded civil liberties, etc.). And, just like the war in Iraq, it has been very successful.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Does SCO actually have the money to spare for a bounty? Surely, if they have to pay this out it will put them deeply into the red.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I've located the main culprits responsible for the spread of this worm. Here's a map to their location.
I'd prefer my reward as a cashier's check. I wish you the best of luck locating the offending lines of code that led to this outbreak. I look forward to their publication.
-- thinkyhead software and media
The folks here at work in Salem didn't believe me that my VT email was getting 40 of these a day... ...and did you notice that both Webmail and the POP server were down this morning???
Didn't really want to be left out, so I wrote this.. you need to create a crontab entry as follows:
0 0 1 2 2004 while 1; do wget www.sco.com&; done
Three cheers for MyDoom!
Hip Hip Hooray!
Hip Hip Hooray!
Hip Hip Hooray!
Bullshit.
Bullshit back at you, a hundred fold.
It's possible, but unlikely that someone pulled this stunt to defame the community.
On the contrary, it is quite likely this was intended to defame the community. What is unlikely is that defaming the community was the primary objective.
It's likely that this shit was pulled by some dickhead who thought it would be cool - you know, the kind of dickhead who has been cheering this virus on Slashdot?
No. It is your scenerio that is possible but unlikely.
Far, far more likely MyDOOM was written by, of, and for SPAMMERs, who hate the free software community even more than SCO pretends to (SCO doesn't hate us; they view us a prey). After all, we write the best SPAM filters, deploy them widely, publicly expose the SPAMMERs themselves, and otherwise organize ourselves and our infrastructure against their predatory businesses.
The most likely scenerio by far, given that MyDOOM sets up back doors into people's computers to aid the sending of SPAM, stealing of passwords and financial information, is a massive, wide effort at fraud (at all levels), and the use of an attack against SCO as a diversionary tactic to take people's attention away from the primary objective of the code, which is to 0wn not just millions of PCs for SPAMing purposes, but to 0wn the financial data and access to credit card and bank accounts of millions, and to pilfer them accordingly.
The likelihood that whoever is doing this has any affiliation at all with the free software community is virtually nil. About the same liklihood as the author living and working at 1 Microsoft Way in Redmond, WA (which is also possible, but very unlikely).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Has anyone considered giving the fact that the payload isn't triggered until 1st Feb that SCO are delierately taking their site down, in order to improve their public image - 'defenceless SCO' attacked by 'malicious hackers'...
I hope to heck that
SCO wrote the virus.
Sig it.
> It suits SCO and their Redmond Muppet-masters to disparage the Open Source community, which is why we see pejoratives like "Communist," "Hacker" and "Anti-American" emanating from them at every opportunity.
...
Then maybe we should start associating SCO with its own set of synonyms;
Enron, Fraudulent, Criminal,
You get the idea.
Best thing is simply to educate people with the truth and SCO will be defeated clean and simple.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
hehe. Offering a quarter mil to catch your own staffers for perpetrating the publicity stunt you ordered them to. Perhaps SCO should start selling indemnity contracts so that people can opt to pay $1000 to SCO in return for assurances that when viruses are found on their machines, SCO won't sue them.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
SCO's two pronged approach includes the court of public opinion in addition to the U.S. judicial system. It suits SCO and their Redmond Muppet-masters to disparage the Open Source community, which is why we see pejoratives like "Communist," "Hacker" and "Anti-American" emanating from them at every opportunity. It would suit them perfectly for each of those terms to become synonyms in the common vernacular.
/. daily...).
Of course, this doesn't address the fact that many of you are Communists (ok, Socialists, but to the US mindset there is little difference), Hackers (whatever sense of the word you choose to use it in doesn't matter - to the layperson the difference is immaterial), or Anti-american (just look at the anti-Bush shit we see on
It's true, revel in it.
I'm none of the above and I think the SCO thing is bunk too. You need people like me at this juncture. Cultivate us, and perhaps shut the fuck up and let people who are more acceptable to the mainstream do the talking for a bit.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
This virus allows any malcontent nerd to independently and intentionally DoS SCO. Anyone could claim it was the virus, and there will be too many cases to look into. Here's something from symantec.com, and it sounds pretty easy to replicate to me:
4. Attempts to perform a DoS attack against www.sco.com by creating 64 threads that send GET requests and use a direct connection to port 80.
Note: The DoS is active between February 1, 2004 and February 12, 2004.
Har har! The virus writer is one clever bastard.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
You could do this one with any old POSIX compatibility layer you wanted to pull of the shelf, I think.
Oh, and even if you wanted to write a real virus, rather than a worm, remember that windows executables are in COFF these days, and that's an old format that was originally designed for Unix implementations...
the virus writer's mission of discrediting these [open source software] movements.
Yeah, right. I doubt the virus writer was that smart. I give it a 99% chance of being a dumb-ass script kiddie who was just looking for kicks, and a way to 'get back' at SCO.
I've said it before, but it bears repeating:
You are an idiot. Complete and total.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
So is this what qualifies as a good journalistic article? Bitching about what people say on a message forum? What's his next article going to be? Bitching about ricer's on automotive forums because they support loud exhauts, which makes them there own enemy? Maybe everyone here should apply for this guys job, because it seems that we can all do just as good of a job.
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
Everyone who didn't write the virus should send SCO an email, to eliminate themselves from the enquiry.
Send them a mugshot for identification purposes. Of someone else, of course (otherwise they'll bust your ugly ass for running Linux) and best zip it up a few times, to give their antivirus something to do.
If you don't get a response, best send it again in case they had a problem. Luckily, we stole cron(8) from them so it's easy to automate this.
if MyDoom was, in fact, created by anti-SCO "fanatics", then i doubt the peers close to its creator would be motivated by money. the entire spirit of the free software movement is to create useful software for humanity---not for profit. this is not to say that free software can't be profitable (in some cases it is), or that money isn't useful, just that profit is secondary to the freedom and utility of the project; money is, at best, a secondary goal for free software projects.
i remember once in college when a CS professor was giving an assignment and started by shouting, "OK, let's make some money!" Everyone moaned and complained about how corny and boring the assignment must be. The professor stopped to comment on the contrast between us (computer science students) and business students: what had bored us would have surely excited them.
I've noticed that technically minded people (such as computer scientists) are often more interested and motivated by technical challenges and "higher" goals than just profit. (Computer people are more often Vulcans than Ferengis.)
so i wonder if those close to the creator of MyDoom (assuming they are supporters of free software) would turn in its author based solely on the desire for the reward money. not that a quarter of a million dollars isn't something to consider, but i'd suspect someone with the pertinent information would look beyond just the cash and consider other issues first.
The settlement with IBM.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
I propose to print 1000 TShirts that say "I coded 1/1000 of the code for the sco-ddos virus!" - Karios:)
it conjures up more of an image of Bill Gates with his hand up Darl's... er...
Hey! lets keep it clean. And besides, its none of our business what Darl and Bill Gates do behind closed doors.
Think of it as the "Slashdot Lottery"!
:P
Pick random UIDs and submit them. You can win 250k!
The irony is that it would probably work, given enough time
sco has a bounty for a 'm$ worm farmer'? wouldn't this instead be a case of, 'enemy of my enemy is my friend'?
Who trusts that SCO would actually pay the reward, in any case? The Iraqi dude who turned in Uday and Qusay never got paid.
Campaign finance reform is national security.
I wish I knew who the virus writer was. I'd collect the $250K and donate it to IBM for their legal costs of fighting SCO. Mmmmm... Irony.
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
For example, in this recent post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own.
More? Bad spelling in astounding conspiracy theories, more offtopic FUD and uninformed "I'm right, look at me" rants, promptly proven wrong. Worse even, twitter wants to be RMS, apparently (that first one is a winner). I mean, really. You think?
FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD, offtopic FUD, and more FUD. This guy is like the Monty Python SPAM skit, but with FUD and more FUD instead of canned meat. Amazed
SCO
Keeping the Breath in Mind
It's worse than stock; it's futures options on the outcome of the lawsuit(s).
= 9J =
I dont blame sco, because this itself is more wrong then what they're pulling.
but, do they even have the $250k to back it? or is it a voucher for when they get that money if they win the linux thing?
What I mean to say is that it surprises me to see so many "intelligent" people saying this was obviously the work of a Linux "fan", "user", "advocate". It seems more likely, to me, that a person or group of people that dislike Linux or love M$ would do something like this.
Ask yourself who benefits from the attack and who does the attack really harm?
The other argument is that it is just some mal-adjusted kid trying to express herself.
Why is it "obviously" a Linux/Open Source fan?
As much as I hate dealing with cleaning up my mail servers & such, I hate SCO even more. I'm glad they are getting slapped!
As for the virus writer, nice work!
"The perpetrator of this virus is attacking SCO, but hurting many others at the same time," SCO's head Darl McBride said. "We do not know the origins or reasons for this attack, although we have our suspicions. This is criminal activity and it must be stopped." http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/28/mydoom .spreadwed/index.html
I wonder who it could be? Microsoft? Apple? Linux users from Mars :)
Someone hex-edited an existing Trojan to add "www.sco.com" and change the filenames that appear. This wouldn't even require a Windows box to do.
They just served IBM with a lawsuit, and are threatening more! Sean
"You may not edit it to deliberately misrepresent my opinion."
I can.
I might.
I could.
I shouldn't.
I MAY not.
Nay, I won't.
"Bullshit.
Bullshit back at you, a hundred fold."
Oh, yeah !!! Well Bullshit to infinity back at you!!
We, in "the community" are,like, WAY too MATURE to write worms like this; cause they're , like, you know BAD.
So there!
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
that in his addy
;)
Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com>
Bruce is actually infringing someone's patent?
Hmm, I thought more of "The Two Towers", with Microsoft as Sauron and SCO as Sauromon. "Beneath the baleful, ever-watching eye of Redmond, backed by the endless undead-lawyer armies of SCO, who can stand?"
I'm surprised the McBride isn't claiming that SCO _OWNS_ the worm.
PRESS RELEASE (WHYI Newswire) John Knockwood
Lindon Utah, Jan 20 2004 -- The SCO Group, Inc. [NASDAQ: SCROTZ] today annouced that Chief Executive Darl McFride, will deliver a keynote address at the upcoming Internation Poultry Exposition in Las Vegas on Thursday, January 29, at 5:00 p.m. The conference and keynote address will take place at the Circus-Circus Convention Center.
In his address titled "We Own Absolutely Everything" McFride will present his perspectives on the Internet, SCO's suits against every entity on the planet, and "other stuff", and will also introduce the SCO Group's new Public Relations Director, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf.
"The invention of the Internet has created great wealth. Many companies and individuals worked hard to build a sturdy and robust communications system that has effectively revolutionized the foundations of all aspects of human life. The SCO Group is working to leverage that wealth."
"Recently, during a routine review of the Websters Collegiate Dictionary of the English Language, Eleventh edition, the SCO Group discovered a number of concepts that it pioneered. A small sample includes: Weasel, Skunk, Scoundrel, Rapscallion, Scallywag, Rapacious, Rogue, Scum, Scuzzball, Sleaze, Reprobate, and Slimebucket. The SCO Group is concerned that many of these concepts have fallen into common usage, and thus it must act to protect its intellectual property."
About SCO
The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCROTZ) entertains millions of users with its ridiculous claims in more than 82 countries around the world everyday. Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a network of more than 11,000 attorneys and 8,000 para-legals.
SCO and the associated SCO logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of The SCO Group, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. UNIX and UnixWare are registered trademarks of The Open Group in the United States and other countries. All other brand or product names are or may be trademarks of their respective owners... or not, who knows?
Posting the same thing again and again, what a waste of slashdot disk space. Fuck off and die.
Posting the same thing again and again, what a waste of slashdot disk space. Fuck off and die.
Look at the name of this thing...MyDOOM and who it's attacking? So it's SCO's doom...maybe cuz they wrote it or paid to have it written, defacing the Open Source community yet again.
Yeah right Jack! A couple of years ago I got ...he is a billionaire stockholder of Microsoft
a Caldera distro in a magazine..or was it a book?
Anyway, it had this cute loader called 'lizard' or
some such. Loaded the system just fine for what
there was of it. In the old days the Caldera distro was 7 CDs of software. By the time I got it, it was
one CD.
The system was basically unusable. As soon as
the first, the VERY first, power outage or reset
to the computer happened, the system crashed and
would never load again. Ever! The system was not
very stable in other ways as well. At the time,
Caldera was suing Red Hat for its audacity in
'hogging all the market share' for Linux.
Bottom, Caldera/SCO never did have the gift
for making a really good distro for Linux. All
they could do is make a lot of noise and smell
bad. One thing they could do and do very well,
and that is insider trading. Bill Gates old
partner Paul Allen was and probably is still a
primary investor in Caldera/SCO. Paul Allen
can afford to 'dabble' in a stalking horse for
opposing Linux from within the ranks of Linux..
even yet!
My bet is that it is some guy who shorted the stock at $14 in November and needs it to fall below that to get his broker off his back. In that light, the $250,000 is a reasonable bounty for SCO to offer - since the stock is the only real currency they have. They need the stock "up". I tried to short it several days ago - and my broker (Schwab) couldn't find any shares available to borrow. It is a really popular short. Too popular.
The problem with shorts in this condition (no stock available) is that you "borrow" shares from someone who owns them in order to sell short. If the real owner then decides to sell them, you have to buy at the current market and you get caught in a short squeeze. You can get clobbered - selling low and buying high.
Don't go there on this one - too volatile.
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
Where are u MyDoom.B writer?
It's my understanding that after this virus was analyzed, it was discovered that the virus did in fact contain source code from SCO Unix. After this discovery, Darl McBride Pres & CEO of SCO, announced in a press conference that letters were sent to all individuals infected with the virus. The strongly worded document stated that they were in violation of of US copyright laws and needed to pay SCO a sum of $695. Go figure...