The controversial SCO Group has offered $250,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or group responsible for creating the MyDoom virus.
The company also said Tuesday that it is working with U.S. Secret Service and FBI to identify the author of the virus. Also known as Novarg and Mimail.R, MyDoom spread quickly across the Internet Monday, traveling as an e-mail attachment and infecting PCs whose users opened the file. The program instructs infected PCs to send data to SCO"s Web server from Feb. 1 to Feb. 12, essentially flooding the Web site and making it inaccessible. SCO has incurred the wrath of the Linux community for its claims that important pieces of the open-source operating system are covered by SCO"s Unix copyrights. IBM, Novell and other Linux backers strongly dispute the claims.
SCO"s Web site was knocked offline by denial-of-service attacks several times in the last year, none of which had been initiated by a virus. "This one is different and much more troubling, since it harms not just our company, but also damages the systems and productivity of a large number of other companies and organizations around the world," Darl McBride, president and CEO of SCO, said in a statement. "The perpetrator of this virus is attacking SCO, but hurting many others at the same time...This is criminal activity and it must be stopped." Offering a reward for an online attack has been tried before, with little success.