SCO website finally returns after crippling attack

SCO Group's primary website has only just returned to service after being knocked off the internet more than a month ago by MyDoom.A

The SCO.com website returned to the internet last week after suffering a denial of service attack that lasted for more than a month.

The SCO Group website was the main target of the MyDoom worm, which is a variant of the Mimail virus and was first discovered towards the end of January. The worm installed a back-door program that allowed infected PCs to be controlled remotely. The worm was designed to launch an attack on SCO's web servers between 1 February and 12 February. However, because of incorrectly set PC clocks, the attack continued until the end of last week.

SCO has roused the ire of many in the software community because of a series of lawsuits related to its Unix intellectual property, and for attempts to force companies using Linux to pay licence fees to SCO.

The sheer ferocity of the attack caught SCO and security analysts by surprise and SCO's initial confidence in surviving the attack quickly diminished. Within hours, the SCO site was completely inaccessible, forcing the company to launch an alternative site to maintain its Web presence.

According to Finnish security company F-Secure, SCO attempted to revive the site on 27 February at 06:15GMT, but had to take it down again after 30 minutes.

Website monitoring company Netcraft claims SCO.com was returned to the internet on Friday evening and over the weekend - it did experience two short breaks in service, but apart from that it has been performing well.

Munir Kotadia writes for ZDNet UK