NewsFactor Network | SCO Gains Unlikely Ally in Fighting DoS Attacks

SCO Gains Unlikely Ally in Fighting DoS Attacks
By Kimberly Hill

August 26, 2003 4:28PM

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There is wide speculation that the denial-of-service attacks are coming from within the open-source community, where SCO's actions have ignited passionate oppostition.

Software maker SCO's Web site fell to a denial-of-service (DoS) attack over the weekend. Although the site was brought back online before noon on Monday, SCO's director of corporate communications

Blake Stowell told NewsFactor, questions remain about who was responsible and what motivated both this and an earlier attack launched against SCO in May. SCO has contacted the FBI on the matter.

Eric Raymond, president of the Open Software Initiative, called publicly for the hacker to stop his actions. According to Stowell, whoever perpetuated the attack contacted Raymond either before or during the episode.

Unlikely Bedfellows

"Raymond has basically said that the open-source community has to stop this," Stowell said. Raymond's public stance makes very unlikely bedfellows of a leading proponent of open-source software and a company attempting to lay claim to the code behind the Linux operating system.

There is wide speculation that the attacks are coming from within the open-source community, where SCO's actions have ignited passionate oppostition.

"We're glad he is encouraging the open-source community to stop the attacks," Stowell said, "although I don't think that Eric Raymond and SCO share the same ideas about open source and intellectual property."

Downplaying the Issue

SCO considered issuing a formal statement in the matter, said Stowell, but decided against it. The company currently sits at the center of a software-industry maelstrom, having recently sued IBM for violating its intellectual-property rights.

A DoS attack involves flooding a Web site with traffic, rather than infiltrating it with malicious code, Aberdeen Group vice president Jim Hurley told NewsFactor. Such security lapses are very difficult to prevent given the current state of network hardware and software, he noted.

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