I don't think so. I think a simple pump and dump scheme would be more likely.
Both have a fair risk of detection; using the lawyer as a conduit gets more people involved.
The more conspirators involved the greater the likelyhood of the whole thing falling apart.
I think the lawyers in the SCO situation are just in it for themselves: they are just sucking up as much money as they can as long as the thing stays afloat.
That's legal, and in their personal best interest.
No need to look for a conspiracy there.
I'm not saying this is true, not even saying that this is my opinion. It's just a theory. Could this work? Is it legal?
Yeah that could work. IIRC the order of precedence in a disolution is:
bond holders
creditors / suppliers
stock holders
I'm not sure, maybe lawyers move to the head of the line, as they are directly representing the company.
And would it be legal if, when all this is over, my old friends lets me get a share of the money he earned while representing my case?
OK that's the nub of the scheme. Surely illegal, as it involves a kickback. That would have to be hidden w/ creative accounting, so some fraud involved. The only practical thing preventing this is that your lawyer friend would be taking a serious risk of losing his law license. Without that he is completely out of business.
Many posts here talk about what if worms did some *real* damage. I wonder what this could be? A worm that formats the HDD is obviously useless - how will it replicate? In order to spread, it necessarily exposes its presense and therefore it can be killed. So the max damage a worm can do is limited. Am I right in my thinking?
Well off the top of my head:
Delay execution of the payload. That provides time to spread.
Stop scanning after succesfully infecting n other machines. Minimise the chance of detection.
Combine all the above:
Set a flag to prevent reinfection.
Go dormant after succesfully infecting n other machines.
Activate on a fixed date.
Why stop at formatting the HDD? Recursively scan the fs and zero out all (not open) files. Reboot to a sniblet of assembly that zeros out the FAT. Try and recover that!
I kind of feel that if it when to court he might have a problem because he patented an idea after it was mentioned in a conference, if it was mentioned in a conference it is already in the Public Domain so not patentable, but just having the case in the first place would prove his objectives.
You missed the point. What they did publicly say is that it is not posssible to use palladium for this purpose and that they were therefor were not pursuing it. They have thus substantiated at least 2 requirements for his patent:
1. Non obvious. (They said it's not doable.)
2. No prior art. (They said they have not been working on it.)
So he has pretty good grounds for defending it, courtesy of M$.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the lawyers in the SCO situation are just in it for themselves: they are just sucking up as much money as they can as long as the thing stays afloat. That's legal, and in their personal best interest. No need to look for a conspiracy there.
bond holders
creditors / suppliers
stock holders
I'm not sure, maybe lawyers move to the head of the line, as they are directly representing the company.
OK that's the nub of the scheme. Surely illegal, as it involves a kickback. That would have to be hidden w/ creative accounting, so some fraud involved. The only practical thing preventing this is that your lawyer friend would be taking a serious risk of losing his law license. Without that he is completely out of business.Oh yeah, IANAL and IANAA (accountant).
Well off the top of my head:
Delay execution of the payload. That provides time to spread.
Stop scanning after succesfully infecting n other machines. Minimise the chance of detection.
Combine all the above:
Set a flag to prevent reinfection.
Go dormant after succesfully infecting n other machines.
Activate on a fixed date.
Why stop at formatting the HDD? Recursively scan the fs and zero out all (not open) files. Reboot to a sniblet of assembly that zeros out the FAT. Try and recover that!
1. Non obvious. (They said it's not doable.)
2. No prior art. (They said they have not been working on it.)
So he has pretty good grounds for defending it, courtesy of M$.
Pgp (the windows versions) do not allow copy/paste for passwords. You must manually type it into the window.