MEDIA ALERT: Statement from SCO regarding Denial of Service attack
FBI Investigating Serious Denial of Service Attack Against SCO; Seeks to Confirm Identity of Attacker
Lindon, Utah - May 6, 2003 - SCO (Nasdaq: SCOX) 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.
About The SCO Group The SCO Group (NASDAQ:
SCOX) helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses
everyday through business solutions. Headquartered in Lindon, Utah, SCO has a worldwide
network of more than 11,000 resellers and 8,000 developers. SCO Global Services
provides reliable localized support and services to all partners and customers.
For more information on SCO products and services visit http://www.sco.com.
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