Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the no-surprise-there dept.
quakeslut writes "It's Feb. 1st everyone... and all of you who have been reading Slashdot know that today MyDoom.A begins it's attack... according to Reuters, SCO has already been hit hard. Stay tuned for Tuesday when MyDoom.B hits Microsoft..."
Re:Why today...
by
87C751
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
This is akin to blaming Smith and Wesson for injuries to the neighbors when you fire your gun in random directions.
Nit: It's more akin to blaming Smith & Wesson when mayhem results from you firing your Glock in random directions.
-- Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
every rose has its thorn
by
victorvodka
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
A DDOS like this will have a trivial effect on a company like SCO, whose business model does not depend on its web site. For Microsoft, though, it really might cut into their bottom line and esteem as a company. Let's hope something good comes out of this idiocy.
--
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
Re:I'm Doing My Part
by
borgheron
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This is not helping. Why would you even want to do this??
Please stop as you're injuring the community you're trying to help.
GJC
-- Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I wish it wouldn't happen. This virus is painting the Linux community as a bunch of petulant adolescents - regardless of who's doing it.
I'm trying to remember who in the Linux community was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying "Let's take the high road." We should do just that. We all know that SCO doesn't have a leg to stand on. Let's let them sink themsleves.
--
There is no spoon or sig.
Helps SCO and Microsoft
by
Mysteray
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Does anyone believe that this will do anything except help SCO? It associates their enemies (IBM, Linux), with worm/virus creators and spammers. If this sort of thing keeps up, the US Legislative and Executive branches will actively take the side of SCO and MS against Linux and it's "hackers".
What do they need a website for anyway? Their only business is lawsuits and press releases.
Re:Helps SCO and Microsoft
by
dreamchaser
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
YOU might not assume those things, but Joe Public will. It's all about perception. And if they catch the perp and he DOES turn out to be a linux zealot, it will taint the whole community.
Just because YOU have some sense and intelligence doesn't mean the press or the public does.
Re:How stupid do you have to be?
by
ardiri
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
> SCO had plenty of time to prepare for this
makes you wonder if they had anything to do with the virus itself? if someone was going to make a blatent attempt at SCO - why not make it a surprise. publicity stunt it may be, all being run on feb 1 (sunday, non business day) - its obviously worked. news all over the world has picked this up.
Re:It shouldn't have happened yet
by
CrackedButter
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
wasn't it mentioned that some clocks gas the incorrect time, magify this over a million plus pc's and this makes a difference. Yes?
Re:Finally!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
This virus is painting the Linux community as a bunch of petulant adolescents - regardless of who's doing it.
No, it's not. The media (and SCO, et al for obvious reasons) is painting the F/OSS community as adolescents
What they didn't include in the article
by
marsu_k
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Curiously, this article seems to imply that there was a political agenda behind DDoSing SCO - but to quote Mikko Hypponen of F-secure a bit more:
"It's also possible the attack against SCO is just a smokescreen to misdirect attention away from the backdoor component in the virus - which is most likely included in order to facilitate sending of spam email messages."
Similiar, albeit longer, quote from him asserting that indeed spammers were behind this worm was in the local newspaper on Friday, but it's in Finnish and I'm too lazy to translate it. But the above quote can be found here.
"I wish it wouldn't happen. This virus is painting the Linux community as a bunch of petulant adolescents"
In case anyone still thinks this virus is related to linux people, let's put it as bluntly as we can:
Spammers have created yet another virus to send their emails, not caring about the cost to you, your computer, the law, or the internet in general
If you believed the spammer lies about how you've opted in to something, or how this is their freedom of speech, or how you can just press delete, then this should be the evidence you need: spammers are prepared to take down the entire internet for their own personal gain.
If anybody has bought anything advertised by email, or is considering doing so, or knows anybody who buys from email advertisements, then please be aware: you are supporting the criminals who are deliberately and maliciously attacking your computer, and the computers of your friends. Their programs are constantly bombarding your computer, where any mistake you make could lead to your computer becoming unusable by you, and being used to send illegal emails in vast quantities to the computers of others.
If any newspaper editor is reading this, and thinks "it's attacking SCO, it must be programmed by a Linux advocate", wake up and smell the misdirection. The DDOS in this virus was added as an afterthought. "Virus creation wizard step 6: you are nearly finished creating your virus. now type the name of a website you want it to attack"
Yes, it's a classic trick, and it's worked for thousands of years. I'ts worked for politicians and armies. It's worked for the con-artist and the cult leader. What is this trick? Miss-direction. If you think that this virus has anything at all to do with the open source community or SCO then your not keeping your eye on the ball sparky!
1. This virus makes a machine an open relay. Considering recent legislation and other anti-spam techniques I smell spammer bovine feces here.
3. The open source community is coming up with various anti-spam measures. Don't you think the spammers would love painting their enemy as petulant child - as they have proven themselves to be?
MyDOOM isn't the open source community pissing on on SCO, it's spammers pissing on all of us.
-- "Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
It's not really a bad thing
by
smartin
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I know some people think this virus makes the linux community look bad, but that's not really the case. It's just another windows virus in a long line of windows viruses, written somewhere by some asshole for whatever reason they see fit. Even if it turns out that the writter is a Linux fanatic, you can't hold the whole community responsibe for the actions of one individual. Personally i think it's a good thing because it does serve three useful functions (no i did not write it:)).
It forces somes asshole companies of the net for a while.
It raises awareness of the whole SCO fiasco and I'm not seeing much in the way if sympathy for them in the press.
It shows once again that windows is a virus ridden insecure platform.
Whats not to like.
-- The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
SCO website just a symbol...
by
bangular
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Realistically, who the hell even goes to the SCO website. They've got so few new potential customers anyway (I would put the number at zero). Current UnixWare users doubtfully visit their website very much anyway.
Their website being down is more of a symbol. A symbol to them of "Look at what they are doing to us". It's obviously not very important to them anyway seeing as how in the past they've taken it down for hours to days at a time for "server upgrades". If it were that critical to them, they wouldn't have had downtime. But it was cheaper to take it down and do what they needed to do to spend the money to keep it up during upgrades.
Anyway, SCO can eat apple sauce out of my ass with a spoon.
Re:How did this virus spread so easily?
by
unborn
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
An infection where the user knowledgeably accepts a substance ( even if considered harmless at the moment of acceptance ) should be called "a poison", not "a virus".
If you are given a drink that will kill you, but you drink it without knowing - that's a poison. If someone sneezes a few feets away and an airplane passes by you at the same exact moment of the other person sneezing and you can't hear the sneeze, and you get infected - then it's a virus.
Hence, opening an executable is subjecting yourself to the possibility of poisoning. Reading your email while a flaw is exploited in your email client is a virus.
Telling people not to voice their opionions because of fear of what other people might think of you is an asinine way to excersice your right to free speech.
Yes, free speech is something we believe in at slashdot as well. We can and should make jokes. Why? Because we always make jokes about things! I would make a joke right now, but (1) I'm not that funny, and (2) I'm just too shocked that I am being told in a +5 comment not to say something.
Let the media report what they will. The fact is, some part of the community that you posted to can find humour in this. We are for sure a community that finds humour in everything.
Actually, now that I read your comment again, I am not sure you are serious. Perhaps it was just a joke and our mods have modded you insightfull?
Unfortunately, this is really the media's fault. There were several high profile articles that quoted posts modded +5, Funny on Slashdot's original article about MyDoom and cited them as the voice of the Open Source community, taking glee at this new virus. It was essentially cited as evidence that the "nefarious" Open Source community was somehow behind this virus or honestly approved of it. Basically these people don't understand how Slashdot works, that we find humor in even the most macabre topics, and that one person's comment doesn't mean anything more than that one random person thought something. As another poster said, it's like quoting a guy in a bar in LA and saying "people in LA think this...".
Anyway, I know and you know how to spot a troll/humorous post/etc. on Slashdot. And we know that people's opinions go all over the map on many issues discussed on Slashdot. Joe Reporter doesn't get this and there is a real risk of them printing more smear-stories about a community that like-it-or-not you will be perceived as part of by virtue of posting here. It's reasonable for us to try not to make that community look bad - not saying not to speak your mind, but to keep in mind that in a high profile story like this, even though you may be Joe Nobody, your words could be used against you and lots of other people.
Re:How did this virus spread so easily?
by
drinkypoo
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. I spent a whole working day doing nothing but cleaning this virus (with stinger) in the process of which I found a couple other worms as well. You ask people, why did you even look at that attachment? What made you think it was a good idea to run it? And half of them say, I didn't open an attachment! Well, bollocks to you, obviously they're clicking things without realizing what they're clicking. People need more computer training, plain and simple. I wonder if the situation would be analogous to driver training. Germany has much much driver training than the USA and consequently they can have highways where you can drive as fast as you can manage without doing anything stupid (besides drive really fast in the first place.) Of course, there, if you get caught without your reflective triangle on the autobahn, kiss your license good bye; Same if you're hogging the left lane and someone flashes their brights at you, and you don't get over.
I wonder if more computer training would reduce the number of "accidents" like this that we have here. It seems even most persons who use the computer as a key part of their job every day have no idea what the hell they're doing. I'm not expecting them to know (much about) how it works, just to sort of get an idea of what's a good idea, and what isn't.
-- "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:How did this virus spread so easily?
by
glesga_kiss
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
For the past 4 versions of Windows Microsoft has refused to remove a huge security hole called file extension hiding.
Bollocks. The people commonly infected with viruses wouldn't even know what a file extension was, let alone the difference between an exe and a txt file.
"The one with the W is a word file, the portrait is a graphic file etc". Give a file "virus.exe" the same icon graphic as a word file, and most users wouldn't know the difference.
On the other hand, if you don't hide the extension, then each of us here would be constantly dealing with dumb users who have renamed "Document1.doc" to "Report" (no extension). For 99% of users, hiding extensions is a good idea.
www A 127.0.0.1
by
Stephen+Samuel
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Given that they knew this was coming, and knew that they didn't have the bandwidth/CPU to handle the masssive overload, why didn't SCO Just set the A record for their website to 127.0.0.1 for a couple of days?? Either that or 192.168.42.42... With the former, a virus infected machine would simply attack itself. With the later, it would try to contact a well known address which would allow sysadmins to find any infected machine (and remove the virus) by simply looking for references to the address.
-- Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Ignoramous equally disturbing
by
bstadil
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Before you spout more junk maybe you want to avail yourselves of some information.
The virus is written in Russia as a mail relay vehichle. They are just using the SCO issues as a foil, and indeed it worked on you. There even is an apology inside the virus from the author stating that he is just doing his "job"
Now Hang your head in shame.
-- Help fight continental drift.
Lawyer think...
by
LinuxGeek
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Yeah, I read that and knew that couldn't be the mindset of a technology company. It must be true that SCO has completed the transition into a litigious entity. I mean, who is going to buy or trust OS software from people that had 5 days notice of this event and couldn't think of a single thing to do to protect their site?
Registrar: DOTSTER
Domain Name: SCO.COM
Created on: 03-SEP-87
Expires on: 02-SEP-04
Last Updated on: 22-JAN-03
Take note that the last change of their domain record was a year ago last sunday,. No one even bothered to do something as simple as change www.sco.com to a place holder on another subnet and then use their massive free publicity to announce their alternate name for the duration of the virus DDOS attack.
When the response boils down to nothing more than a promise to make more announcements, well, I think they are sacrificing what is left of their technical reputation.
--
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Re:Lawyer think...
by
LinuxGeek
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
My point is that sevaeral SCO folks ( and Darl specifically) are blaming the actual traffic flood, even todays PR release.
LINDON, Utah, Feb. 1/PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The SCO Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOX), the owner of the UNIX(R) operating system and a leading provider of UNIX-based solutions, has confirmed that a large scale, Denial of Service attack has started that has made the company's Web site, www.sco.com, completely unavailable. Internet traffic began building momentum on Saturday evening and by midnight Eastern Time the SCO Web site was flooded with requests beyond its capacity. The company expects these attacks to continue through Feb. 12.
SCO has made their website completely unavailable by removing the www.sco.com name record, not a flood of packets. They have mentioned nothing about packet filtering at the router level or any alternative method of keeping their main site online. When the attacks start flooding Microsoft, do you think they will just take their main site down or look at a solution that keeps them up?
I'm only pointing out that SCO is not being honest about the reason for their web sites complete unavailablity. They could still be online with several alternative options that they aren't exploring and want to act like they have no choice in the matter. It looks like they are taking the 'poor me' attitude when things could have been made much better with a little effort.
Maybe their site isn't as important to the operation of their new business model. It may be an even bigger asset to them as a publicity tool while it is down ( due to their lack of name record). When I see them admit that they took it down themselves, then they will have a bit more credibility. With no name record, thus no actual attack on their site, they can't know when the attack would have ended or how severe the flood would have been. They can't really track the attack via DNS lookup operations because that can't give an accurate picture of the potential flood, only the number of participating machines.
They've removed the means to gather statistics about the attack and devise means to counter a defense. The opposite of what I would expect of Microsoft, IBM, Symantec, RedHat, Slashdot or thousands of other sites on the internet.
--
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I must say,/. readers dissapoint me more and more. Incitement of harrassment is exactly the sort of thing Bruce Perens was trying to get away from.
The response to the mydoom virus and the sco case in general on here and other forums might well have put the advance of Linux back 5 years in terms of it's corporate image.
This should not be a personal battle against one individual (and now by your actions and that of others direct harrassment of his family) it should be a legal and economic battle. Whatever moral high ground the linux community might have about the sco case is effectively undermined by childish actions such as these.
I could see some point in publishing the company address and his corporate number. But publishing his personal contact details is reprehensible. Encouraging harrassment is not big, clever or funny.
Slashdot Mirror
Sunday isn't even a business day? How much money will they not lose?
Jonathanjk.com
A DDOS like this will have a trivial effect on a company like SCO, whose business model does not depend on its web site. For Microsoft, though, it really might cut into their bottom line and esteem as a company. Let's hope something good comes out of this idiocy.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
This is not helping. Why would you even want to do this??
Please stop as you're injuring the community you're trying to help.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
I'm trying to remember who in the Linux community was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying "Let's take the high road." We should do just that. We all know that SCO doesn't have a leg to stand on. Let's let them sink themsleves.
There is no spoon or sig.
Does anyone believe that this will do anything except help SCO? It associates their enemies (IBM, Linux), with worm/virus creators and spammers. If this sort of thing keeps up, the US Legislative and Executive branches will actively take the side of SCO and MS against Linux and it's "hackers".
What do they need a website for anyway? Their only business is lawsuits and press releases.
> SCO had plenty of time to prepare for this
makes you wonder if they had anything to do with the virus itself? if someone was going to make a blatent attempt at SCO - why not make it a surprise. publicity stunt it may be, all being run on feb 1 (sunday, non business day) - its obviously worked. news all over the world has picked this up.
wasn't it mentioned that some clocks gas the incorrect time, magify this over a million plus pc's and this makes a difference. Yes?
Jonathanjk.com
This virus is painting the Linux community as a bunch of petulant adolescents - regardless of who's doing it.
No, it's not. The media (and SCO, et al for obvious reasons) is painting the F/OSS community as adolescents
Curiously, this article seems to imply that there was a political agenda behind DDoSing SCO - but to quote Mikko Hypponen of F-secure a bit more:
"It's also possible the attack against SCO is just a smokescreen to misdirect attention away from the backdoor component in the virus - which is most likely included in order to facilitate sending of spam email messages."
Similiar, albeit longer, quote from him asserting that indeed spammers were behind this worm was in the local newspaper on Friday, but it's in Finnish and I'm too lazy to translate it. But the above quote can be found here.
"I wish it wouldn't happen. This virus is painting the Linux community as a bunch of petulant adolescents"
In case anyone still thinks this virus is related to linux people, let's put it as bluntly as we can:
Spammers have created yet another virus to send their emails, not caring about the cost to you, your computer, the law, or the internet in general
If you believed the spammer lies about how you've opted in to something, or how this is their freedom of speech, or how you can just press delete, then this should be the evidence you need: spammers are prepared to take down the entire internet for their own personal gain.
If anybody has bought anything advertised by email, or is considering doing so, or knows anybody who buys from email advertisements, then please be aware: you are supporting the criminals who are deliberately and maliciously attacking your computer, and the computers of your friends. Their programs are constantly bombarding your computer, where any mistake you make could lead to your computer becoming unusable by you, and being used to send illegal emails in vast quantities to the computers of others.
If any newspaper editor is reading this, and thinks "it's attacking SCO, it must be programmed by a Linux advocate", wake up and smell the misdirection. The DDOS in this virus was added as an afterthought. "Virus creation wizard step 6: you are nearly finished creating your virus. now type the name of a website you want it to attack"
1. This virus makes a machine an open relay. Considering recent legislation and other anti-spam techniques I smell spammer bovine feces here.
2. More and more spammers used high jacked machines for DNS, web service as well as relaying their crap. spammers Check out the nanae news group for more examples
3. The open source community is coming up with various anti-spam measures. Don't you think the spammers would love painting their enemy as petulant child - as they have proven themselves to be?
MyDOOM isn't the open source community pissing on on SCO, it's spammers pissing on all of us.
AngryPeopleRule
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
Whats not to like.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Realistically, who the hell even goes to the SCO website. They've got so few new potential customers anyway (I would put the number at zero). Current UnixWare users doubtfully visit their website very much anyway.
Their website being down is more of a symbol. A symbol to them of "Look at what they are doing to us". It's obviously not very important to them anyway seeing as how in the past they've taken it down for hours to days at a time for "server upgrades". If it were that critical to them, they wouldn't have had downtime. But it was cheaper to take it down and do what they needed to do to spend the money to keep it up during upgrades.
Anyway, SCO can eat apple sauce out of my ass with a spoon.
An infection where the user knowledgeably accepts a substance ( even if considered harmless at the moment of acceptance ) should be called "a poison", not "a virus".
If you are given a drink that will kill you, but you drink it without knowing - that's a poison. If someone sneezes a few feets away and an airplane passes by you at the same exact moment of the other person sneezing and you can't hear the sneeze, and you get infected - then it's a virus.
Hence, opening an executable is subjecting yourself to the possibility of poisoning. Reading your email while a flaw is exploited in your email client is a virus.
Is this a troll?
Telling people not to voice their opionions because of fear of what other people might think of you is an asinine way to excersice your right to free speech.
Yes, free speech is something we believe in at slashdot as well. We can and should make jokes. Why? Because we always make jokes about things! I would make a joke right now, but (1) I'm not that funny, and (2) I'm just too shocked that I am being told in a +5 comment not to say something.
Let the media report what they will. The fact is, some part of the community that you posted to can find humour in this. We are for sure a community that finds humour in everything.
Actually, now that I read your comment again, I am not sure you are serious. Perhaps it was just a joke and our mods have modded you insightfull?
Anyway, I know and you know how to spot a troll/humorous post/etc. on Slashdot. And we know that people's opinions go all over the map on many issues discussed on Slashdot. Joe Reporter doesn't get this and there is a real risk of them printing more smear-stories about a community that like-it-or-not you will be perceived as part of by virtue of posting here. It's reasonable for us to try not to make that community look bad - not saying not to speak your mind, but to keep in mind that in a high profile story like this, even though you may be Joe Nobody, your words could be used against you and lots of other people.
I wonder if more computer training would reduce the number of "accidents" like this that we have here. It seems even most persons who use the computer as a key part of their job every day have no idea what the hell they're doing. I'm not expecting them to know (much about) how it works, just to sort of get an idea of what's a good idea, and what isn't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Bollocks. The people commonly infected with viruses wouldn't even know what a file extension was, let alone the difference between an exe and a txt file.
"The one with the W is a word file, the portrait is a graphic file etc". Give a file "virus.exe" the same icon graphic as a word file, and most users wouldn't know the difference.
On the other hand, if you don't hide the extension, then each of us here would be constantly dealing with dumb users who have renamed "Document1.doc" to "Report" (no extension). For 99% of users, hiding extensions is a good idea.
Given that they knew this was coming, and knew that they didn't have the bandwidth/CPU to handle the masssive overload, why didn't SCO Just set the A record for their website to 127.0.0.1 for a couple of days?? Either that or 192.168.42.42... With the former, a virus infected machine would simply attack itself. With the later, it would try to contact a well known address which would allow sysadmins to find any infected machine (and remove the virus) by simply looking for references to the address.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
The virus is written in Russia as a mail relay vehichle. They are just using the SCO issues as a foil, and indeed it worked on you. There even is an apology inside the virus from the author stating that he is just doing his "job"
Now Hang your head in shame.
Help fight continental drift.
Yeah, I read that and knew that couldn't be the mindset of a technology company. It must be true that SCO has completed the transition into a litigious entity. I mean, who is going to buy or trust OS software from people that had 5 days notice of this event and couldn't think of a single thing to do to protect their site?
Registrar: DOTSTER
Domain Name: SCO.COM
Created on: 03-SEP-87
Expires on: 02-SEP-04
Last Updated on: 22-JAN-03
Take note that the last change of their domain record was a year ago last sunday,. No one even bothered to do something as simple as change www.sco.com to a place holder on another subnet and then use their massive free publicity to announce their alternate name for the duration of the virus DDOS attack.
When the response boils down to nothing more than a promise to make more announcements, well, I think they are sacrificing what is left of their technical reputation.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I must say, /. readers dissapoint me more and more. Incitement of harrassment is exactly the sort of thing Bruce Perens was trying to get away from.
The response to the mydoom virus and the sco case in general on here and other forums might well have put the advance of Linux back 5 years in terms of it's corporate image.
This should not be a personal battle against one individual (and now by your actions and that of others direct harrassment of his family) it should be a legal and economic battle. Whatever moral high ground the linux community might have about the sco case is effectively undermined by childish actions such as these.
I could see some point in publishing the company address and his corporate number. But publishing his personal contact details is reprehensible. Encouraging harrassment is not big, clever or funny.
Working for the (other) man