SCO Offers Reward For 'Mydoom' Virus CreatorSCO Offers Reward For 'Mydoom' Virus Creator

The SCO Group Inc., the target of a nasty worm that slowed Internet traffic and clogged e-mail systems, offered on Tuesday a $250,000 reward for arrest and conviction of the virus author.

The Lindon, Utah, company's web server has been the target of several attacks during the past 10 months. The so-called denial-of-service attacks involve a large number of computers sending bogus requests to the server, making it impossible for legitimate traffic to get through.

While not proven, SCO may be the target of such attacks because of its legal challenge of the open-source operating system Linux, which the company claims contains its copyrighted code. SCO's lawsuits have angered the Linux community and its supporters.

In offering the reward, SCO said the pending attack is more troubling than others, because it's also harming other companies and home computer users.

"The perpetrator of this virus is attacking SCO, but hurting many others at the same time," Darl McBride, president and chief executive of SCO, said in a statement. "We do not know the origins or reasons for this attack, although we have our suspicions. This is criminal activity and it must be stopped."

SCO is working with the U.S. Secret Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation in investigating the virus.