[SWLUG] thoughts on mydoom

[Bryn Reeves]

On 09:55 Thu 29 Jan     , Davage, Marcus wrote:
> Posted on The Register:
> 
> The SCO Group has posted a $250,000 bounty for information leading to the
> conviction of the author of the MyDoom worm currently sweeping the Internet.
> The worm has been nicknamed "SCObig" because it harbors a payload that will
> create a Denial of Service attack against SCO's company website next month. 
> SCO advises anyone who has knows about the perpetrator to contact their
> local FBI office. 
> 
> SCO also advises anyone who notices strange executable files, possibly in
> their /usr/bin directory and messages bearing the text /Copyright (C) 1989,
> 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA
> 02111-1307, USA to contact SCO directly. 
> 
> For a fee of $1,399 per CPU, infected users can be hosed down and sent on
> their way. ? 
> 

For more on this, see groklaw (http://www.groklaw.net/) and Bruce Perens'
home page (http://www.perens.com/SCO/DOS/), for some very sensible arguments for
why this probably wasn't done by anyone with a significant role in, or
understanding of FOSS, and why these actions aren't really laudable.

The actual articles at groklaw are here:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040129003223254
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040127222245222
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040127182807841

Cheers

Bryn