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| | | February 8, 2004
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Sunday, February 8, 2004 |
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MyDoom downs SCO.com, but fails to conquer Microsoft
With hundreds of thousands of infected computer systems on board, the MyDoom worm accomplished its mission last Sunday and knocked off the web site of Utah-based UNIX vendor SCO. According to Finnish security software maker F-Secure, the virus, already widely seen as the fastest spreading and farthest reaching in history, performed the "biggest single [denial of service] attack" against the company's main web site, www.sco.com.
The global attack which had been expected since the worm's discovery less than a week earlier is expected to continue through February 12. In the mean time, SCO established an alternative location for its web site at www.thescogroup.com and removed www.sco.com from domain name servers to reduce large-scale flooding of major Internet backbones. While the worm was programmed to overwhelm SCO's servers beginning at 1609 GMT on Sunday, SCO acknowledged the deluge of traffic started hours earlier possibly due to the high number of infected computers with incorrectly set system clocks. A spokesman for the company confirmed the site has been "completely unavailable" since then.
With SCO successfully taken offline, many predicted hard times for Microsoft too as a variant of the worm which appeared just days after the original release was set to attack the software giant's main web site. However, the attack which was scheduled to begin on Tuesday failed to bring Microsoft.com down. Experts pointed to several reasons, including the record of stellar availability of the company's servers, the much less distribution numbers of the second variant of the worm, and a programming bug, which allowed for only 7 percent of the affected computers to attack the site.
Since the advent of the worms, both SCO and Microsoft have offered $250,000 bounties each for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the author or authors of the viruses. Apart from the staggering flood of Internet connections worldwide, the MyDoom worm is believed to have caused billions of dollars in damages across the globe. And while Internet security companies are reporting the distribution of the worm is slowing down, many predict the situation will not return to normal for a while.
More from: AP (via The Washington Post) | CNET News.com 1 2 | Computerworld 1 2 | Enterprise Security Today 1 2 | eWeek 1 2 | InternetNews.com | Reuters 1 2 3 | SearchEnterpriseLinux.com | TechWeb | VNUNET.com 1 2 3
SCO adds copyrights to the brouhaha and an extra $2 billion
But being under attack doesn't necessarily mean you can't attack. The SCO Group introduced significant amendments to its multibillion-dollar lawsuit against computer giant IBM. SCO added two charges of copyright violations each carrying claims of damages of about $1 billion, turning the already highly-controversial litigation into a $5 billion dispute over the foundations of the Linux operating system.
The amended allegations drop the claim against IBM of misappropriation with trade secrets and turns the lawsuit's focus on IBM's alleged role in transferring key UNIX source code to Linux. SCO's move was seen on the horizon when in the middle of 2003 the Utah-based software maker obtained registrations of its copyrights over UNIX System V. A ruling on the addition of the charges is expected within a week.
More from: CNET News.com | Computerworld | CRN | eWeek | InternetNews.com | The Register | Reuters
Oracle ups PeopleSoft takeover bid
Oracle announced it has increased its offer for enterprise and customer relationship management software maker PeopleSoft to $26 per share, or $9.4 billion. This is the second increase since the world's second largest software company shocked the industry with a surprise hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft just days after it had announced plans to acquire smaller rival J.D. Edwards. Oracle's original offer was set at $16 a share, but merely two weeks later was upped to $19.50 per share.
"This is our final price," Oracle Chairman Jeff Henley said in a statement. Analysts predicted the new offer will put further pressure on PeopleSoft's management which had been trying to fend off the hostile bid since its announcement in June.
More from: AP (via USA Today) | CNET News.com 1 2 | Computerworld | CRN | eWeek | InternetNews.com | VNUNET.com | The Washington Post
In Other News...
 The Sydney headquarters of Sharman Networks, the creator of the popular peer-to-peer application Kazaa, were raided on Friday by Australian music industry officials. The legally authorized raids were performed simultaneously at 12 locations and also included Kazaa's partner, Brilliant Digital Entertainment, three university campuses, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and telecommunications firms. The Australian Record Industry Association is engaged in a legal wrangle with Sharman Networks over large-scale illicit distribution of songs over the Kazaa file-swapping network.
Microsoft released an out-of-cycle security patch for the Internet Explorer browser. The update fixes three security flaws, one of which, a cross-domain security vulnerability, due to its particular severity caused the unexpectedly early release of the patch.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's rival RealNetworks fixed security holes in its own popular media player. A specifically malformed media file was found to be able to exploit security flaws in most RealNetworks' media players potentially compromising PC security.
The internal communications of The Washington Post were disrupted on Thursday after the company failed to renew the registration of its WashPost.com domain name. According to the Post, the problem was discovered when an e-mail sent by the newspaper's Baghdad bureau chief, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, bounced back. In an official message, The Washington Post explained it had missed to renew the registration of its domain. Although e-mail and other internal communications went down for parts of the day, neither the print nor the online edition of the newspaper were affected. The company uses a different domain for online news, washingtonpost.com.
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