SCO crippled by denial of service attack

For the third time this year, unknown attackers deluged the SCO Group's website with enough data to make it inaccessible.

The company, known for its claim of ownership of critical pieces of code in the Linux operating system, said the attack started on Wednesday afternoon and continues to block access to the site.

"A bunch of servers [on the Internet] are compromised," said SCO spokesman Blake Stowell. "Those servers are all turned to fire on the SCO website."

In August, hackers downed the website for almost three days. Another attack in May made the site inaccessible for several hours.

"If it is anything like past attacks, it will probably be resolved in about 24 hours or so," Stowell said. Without access to the company's website, customers may not be able to get timely updates and patches, he added.

The attack comes as SCO receives criticism for its pursuit of a legal case that, if successful, would turn over ownership of critical parts of the Linux source code the company.

However, critics won a tactical victory last week, when a judge gave SCO a month to show the portions of the Linux software it believes it owns and to point out where it believes IBM and others are infringing.

The case hasn't tamed the growth of Linux sales. A recent report published by market researcher IDC found that sales of Linux servers grew almost 50 per cent in the third quarter of 2003, compared with the same period a year earlier.

Robert Lemos writes for CNET News.com