AP: SCO Group’s Web site target of hacker attack. It’s the second time this year the Linden, Utah, company’s Web site has been the target of such an attack, in which hackers use multiple computers to overwhelm the site with traffic.
I’m as unhappy with SCO’s abuse of the legal system and its outrageous attack on Linux as anyone. But a denial-of-service attack on SCO’s website isn’t just foolish. It’s totally counterproductive, because it will make people sympathetic with a company that doesn’t deserve sympathy in most respects.
Whoever is doing this: Please cut it out. You’re only hurting your own cause.
UPDATE: There’s some dispute about whether SCO’s being DDOSed or not. See, for example, this Groklaw piece.
Posted by: Raph Levien on August 26, 2003 01:42 AM
Bad journalism, or an actual attack?
The actual reports on what happened are rather conflicting. There’s been no official statement. In fact, it’s quite plausible that the press reports are based on the DoS attack launched in May.
For mind-numbing details, see groklaw. For insightful coverage and analysis, see Linux Weekly News.
http://radio.weblogs.com/0120124/
One thing to keep in mind when covering this case: while the broad strokes are quite clear, the actual facts in dispute can become very complex very fast. This murkiness is helped along quite a bit by the failure of the SCO people to make clear, verifiable claims in public. Of course, keeping things ambiguous is very much in their interest, given the game they’re playing.
This DoS attack is no exception. Sadly, such attacks are quite common (I’ve been hit myself). Any ISP worth its salt would be able to reconfigure and reroute within a matter of hours. If SCO really wanted their site on the air over the weekend, they would have, at routine expense, been able to do so.
Their site outage is a minor sideshow. Many important aspects of the case remain.
Posted by: aNonMooseCowherd on August 26, 2003 09:18 PM
The press seems to be reporting SCO’s claim as an established fact. Maybe investigative journalists should do a little digging and see if there’s any evidence that an attack ever occurred.
The article in the MN says SCO has “notified law enforcement authorities”, but doesn’t say whether the company has filed a formal crime report. If they have, and if it is later determined that no evidence of a crime exists, it will be interesting to see whether the company or any of its officers is charged with filing a false police report.
Posted by: Sanjeev on August 25, 2003 08:15 PM
People jumped the gun on this.
Several people who phoned SCO while the site were down were told “it was taken down for upgrades”
Several people who contacted SCO’s upstream were told there was NO DOS attack going on.
An, Lo and behold, when it came up there were many new pictures from SCO’s Vegas Bull Show, and new info on the Linux extortion racket.
SCO is also claiming they were attacked, it’ll be interesting to see if law enforcement authorities were. Considering their veracity to date I rather doubt the FBI was contacted.