:PR: FBI Investigating DDoS Attack, SCO Suspects Link to Linux Community
PR: FBI Investigating DDoS Attack, SCO Suspects Link to Linux Community May 6, 2003, 14 :00 UTC (59 Talkback[s]) (19427 reads)
[Editor's note: The following is a press release received this morning from The SCO Group.]
SCO today confirmed that on Friday, May 2, 2003 at approximately
10:00 a.m. Mountain Time, it was victimized by a large scale,
coordinated Denial of Service (DoS) attack. The attack consumed about
90 percent of the available bandwidth of SCO's service provider for
the entire Lindon, Utah backbone.
A special agent for Intrusion Detection at the FBI Cyber Crimes Division in Salt Lake
City was contacted and is now analyzing full information on the attacks. Personnel
at the U.S. Attorney's office are proceeding with an investigation into the attack.
It appears that the perpetrator(s) placed a BOT or Worm on a compromised machine,
which was able to load this worm onto hundreds of other machines, which then triggered
attacks at the same time.
The ISP has identified 138 different machines as the intermediate source, but has not yet
confirmed the identity of the original source. The ISP characterized this as "the second
largest DoS attack" they have ever encountered.
"SCO is vigorously investigating the source of the attack and the identity of the
perpetrators," said company spokesperson, Blake Stowell. "This attack came within 48
hours of IBM's response to SCO's lawsuit against IBM alleging intellectual property
infringement. Given this close proximity in time we are carefully examining whether a
link exists between SCO's legal action and some of the Linux community who are hostile
toward SCO for asserting its legal rights."
"A denial of service attack is a serious criminal violation. Cyber terrorism hurts a
business as much as any other crime involving destruction of property. Unfortunately,
some programmers who disagree with SCO's corporate policies have ignored the
seriousness of cyber terrorism. This was a mistake on the part of the people involved,
because we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law and will do everything
possible to assure that justice is done for the commission of this crime," said Stowell.
