Friday, March 23, 2007
3/26 SNR: Redhanded
In a previous post I briefly mentioned the Wikipedia antics of one "Cjhebgen", who was repeatedly vandalizing the Wikipedia pages for SCO & Darl, removing links to GL, deleting long passages about the Linux litigation circus, and even erasing mentions of discontinued products & programs, while also trying to add bits of Me Inc. propaganda copied-n-pasted directly from SCO's marketing materials. He or she was quite persistent about it, too, repeatedly making the same changes after various admins kept reverting them.
Someone with the same nym has occasionally trolled the Y! SCOX board as well. See here and here for examples.
One of the apparently discontinued programs that Cjhebgen wanted to erase from history was that "SCO Marketplace" thing where they'd allegedly pay you to write software for SCO OSes. Turns out an identical edit to the SCO page was made back on February 12th, by a user with the IP address 132.147.251.249, which is an interesting IP address. With a little Whois magic, we have:
132.147.251.249 = [ strider.ut.sco.com ]
(Asked whois.arin.net:43 about +132.147.251.249)
OrgName: The SCO Group Inc.
OrgID: THESC-8
Address: 355 South 520 West
Address: Suite 100
City: Lindon
StateProv: UT
PostalCode: 84042
Country: US
NetRange: 132.147.0.0 - 132.147.255.255
CIDR: 132.147.0.0/16
NetName: SCO-132
NetHandle: NET-132-147-0-0-1
Parent: NET-132-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS.CALDERASYSTEMS.COM
NameServer: NS2.CALDERASYSTEMS.COM
Comment:
RegDate:
Updated: 2006-12-11
OrgTechHandle: ABR102-ARIN
OrgTechName: Bradford Andy
OrgTechPhone: 1-801-765-4999
OrgTechEmail: andyb-arin@sco.com
ARIN WHOIS database last updated 2007-03-22 19: 10
Yep, someone from SCO has edited the WP page about SCO at least once. Which is considered dirty pool under WP's rules & regulations. It's reasonable to infer a link between this individual and "Cjhebgen". Either they're the same person (which I suspect), or possibly multiple people acting in concert. I put it to you that the odds that two people would independently decide the "SCO Marketplace" stuff had to go are really quite small. There's no way to prove the Cjhebgen link with the info currently available, but we know for a fact that someone with SCO's tweaked WP at least once. The question is not whether they're doing it or not, but how much.
Later a third account, "Maryland217", popped up and started making some of the same edits. Edits were again reverted, and the person behind the account is now pleading his or her case with one of the admins.
The story's been picked up at Digg, and Texyt. The latter piece expresses some skepticism about the Cjhebgen-SCO link, which is reasonable, of course; I think it's a logical conclusion to draw, but that's not the same thing as having proof. Another thing we don't have proof of is whether the initial edit, the definitely-SCO one, was an "official" act by the company, or just the freelance act of a random employee who wishes the stock would go up. We'll probably never get a straight answer about that.
Someone with the same nym has occasionally trolled the Y! SCOX board as well. See here and here for examples.
One of the apparently discontinued programs that Cjhebgen wanted to erase from history was that "SCO Marketplace" thing where they'd allegedly pay you to write software for SCO OSes. Turns out an identical edit to the SCO page was made back on February 12th, by a user with the IP address 132.147.251.249, which is an interesting IP address. With a little Whois magic, we have:
132.147.251.249 = [ strider.ut.sco.com ]
(Asked whois.arin.net:43 about +132.147.251.249)
OrgName: The SCO Group Inc.
OrgID: THESC-8
Address: 355 South 520 West
Address: Suite 100
City: Lindon
StateProv: UT
PostalCode: 84042
Country: US
NetRange: 132.147.0.0 - 132.147.255.255
CIDR: 132.147.0.0/16
NetName: SCO-132
NetHandle: NET-132-147-0-0-1
Parent: NET-132-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: NS.CALDERASYSTEMS.COM
NameServer: NS2.CALDERASYSTEMS.COM
Comment:
RegDate:
Updated: 2006-12-11
OrgTechHandle: ABR102-ARIN
OrgTechName: Bradford Andy
OrgTechPhone: 1-801-765-4999
OrgTechEmail: andyb-arin@sco.com
ARIN WHOIS database last updated 2007-03-22 19: 10
Yep, someone from SCO has edited the WP page about SCO at least once. Which is considered dirty pool under WP's rules & regulations. It's reasonable to infer a link between this individual and "Cjhebgen". Either they're the same person (which I suspect), or possibly multiple people acting in concert. I put it to you that the odds that two people would independently decide the "SCO Marketplace" stuff had to go are really quite small. There's no way to prove the Cjhebgen link with the info currently available, but we know for a fact that someone with SCO's tweaked WP at least once. The question is not whether they're doing it or not, but how much.
Later a third account, "Maryland217", popped up and started making some of the same edits. Edits were again reverted, and the person behind the account is now pleading his or her case with one of the admins.
The story's been picked up at Digg, and Texyt. The latter piece expresses some skepticism about the Cjhebgen-SCO link, which is reasonable, of course; I think it's a logical conclusion to draw, but that's not the same thing as having proof. Another thing we don't have proof of is whether the initial edit, the definitely-SCO one, was an "official" act by the company, or just the freelance act of a random employee who wishes the stock would go up. We'll probably never get a straight answer about that.
Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech
By brx0 @ 6:01 PM 
