Do we have a Boinc virus?

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Profile Fred G
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Message 241535 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 16:19:38 UTC - in response to Message 241510.  

@Fred G: Tell RedSpideR that the better_banner.jpg is part of the Seti screensaver & graphics. It's the static banner in the left lower corner. So it's not something he downloaded with a payload. It is part of Seti.
I missed that! Thanks, explanation has been posted.

>Fred


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Message 241542 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 16:36:33 UTC - in response to Message 241526.  

The word "cheating" makes my skin crawl. I'm not being high and mighty, but have you ever played golf with someone who cheats? It's frustrating, angering and feels like a waste of time and money. Now please understand, I do not ever intend to abandon SETI or BOINC projects. Never. But I sure do hope, as do you all, that this issue is resolved ASAP for the sake of the reputation of the project. If for no other reason, it's a potetially irresistable juicy carrot to dangle in front of Black Hats.

My $.02


@Jim: I've been trying to find the words to say how I feel about this entire situation and you hit it spot on. I would like to see some resolution to this issue just to have some closure and let other people know that this will not be tolerated. I believe that some of the strong words here by dedicated SETI/BOINC members have proven that people are taking this seriously and I believe it should be dealt with in the same serious manner by the powers-that-be.

That is my .02 (making .04 cents on this subject for you bean counters out there).

On a side note, has anyone heard from the alleged-person-who-did-this-deed (other than the emails mentioned above)? I still find it odd that this person hasn't tried to clear this up.


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Message 241543 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 16:38:31 UTC

So the first thought is:
-What is the infection vector?
-E-mail attachment?
-Trojan application?
-Unsecured system?

Secondly once the vector is determined you need to figure
out how to remove it without it leaving a way for the person
behind it to re-enable their handiwork.

It's possible that this german individual was behind it, but
it also might be someone trying to make it look like he did it.

I'll be watching this with interest in the upcoming weeks.
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Message 241546 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 16:40:14 UTC - in response to Message 241542.  
Last modified: 3 Feb 2006, 16:40:26 UTC

On a side note, has anyone heard from the alleged-person-who-did-this-deed (other than the emails mentioned above)? I still find it odd that this person hasn't tried to clear this up.
I guess he may be too busy now with wiping out drives on all his own machines, and reformatting them to hide the tracks :) (yes, yes, I know, he may be innocent and just does not want to comment it at all)

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Profile Matt Lebofsky
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Message 241593 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 18:23:27 UTC

First off, notice how the recent average credit on this guy is decreasing? The offending clients have been unable to connect to our scheduler since yesterday.

Second, I'm in contact with him. For the sake of privacy I'd rather not go into detail, but all is well, or will be well.

- Matt
-- BOINC/SETI@home network/web/science/development person
-- "Any idiot can have a good idea. What is hard is to do it." - Jeanne-Claude
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Message 241594 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 18:28:43 UTC - in response to Message 241542.  

The word "cheating" makes my skin crawl. I'm not being high and mighty, but have you ever played golf with someone who cheats? It's frustrating, angering and feels like a waste of time and money. Now please understand, I do not ever intend to abandon SETI or BOINC projects. Never. But I sure do hope, as do you all, that this issue is resolved ASAP for the sake of the reputation of the project. If for no other reason, it's a potetially irresistable juicy carrot to dangle in front of Black Hats.

My $.02


@Jim: I've been trying to find the words to say how I feel about this entire situation and you hit it spot on. I would like to see some resolution to this issue just to have some closure and let other people know that this will not be tolerated. I believe that some of the strong words here by dedicated SETI/BOINC members have proven that people are taking this seriously and I believe it should be dealt with in the same serious manner by the powers-that-be.

That is my .02 (making .04 cents on this subject for you bean counters out there).

On a side note, has anyone heard from the alleged-person-who-did-this-deed (other than the emails mentioned above)? I still find it odd that this person hasn't tried to clear this up.


This isn't cheating. It's theft.
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Message 241599 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 18:32:17 UTC - in response to Message 241593.  
Last modified: 3 Feb 2006, 18:32:53 UTC

First off, notice how the recent average credit on this guy is decreasing?
No, unfortunately not at all :( Still about the same:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_user.php?userid=95866




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Profile Fred G
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Message 241612 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 18:46:19 UTC - in response to Message 241599.  

First off, notice how the recent average credit on this guy is decreasing?
No, unfortunately not at all :( Still about the same:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_user.php?userid=95866



It has increased since I started this thread. He had a RAC of 121,566 and now has a RAC of 126,279 It also sounds like he's going to be able to stick around after all of this. Not good at all!

>Fred


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Message 241616 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 18:50:37 UTC

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Message 241621 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 18:53:45 UTC - in response to Message 241612.  
Last modified: 3 Feb 2006, 18:56:05 UTC

First off, notice how the recent average credit on this guy is decreasing?
No, unfortunately not at all :( Still about the same:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/show_user.php?userid=95866



It has increased since I started this thread. He had a RAC of 121,566 and now has a RAC of 126,279 It also sounds like he's going to be able to stick around after all of this. Not good at all!

>Fred


Well at this point in the investigation, obviously he is being given the benefit of the doubt.

Since I'm reaonably certain the German authorities seriously frown on activities which result in computer theft of services, if the investigation leads to the conclusion this was deliberate on his part, then the SAH team will take appropriate steps to adjust the project statistics and impose any other penalties to the perps they see fit.

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Message 241626 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 18:56:31 UTC - in response to Message 241593.  

First off, notice how the recent average credit on this guy is decreasing? The offending clients have been unable to connect to our scheduler since yesterday.

Second, I'm in contact with him. For the sake of privacy I'd rather not go into detail, but all is well, or will be well.

- Matt


Matt...This is a slap on the wrist. This guy needs and deserves to have all his credits dropped to 0000.00 and be made an example of.
Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....
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Message 241634 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 19:05:40 UTC

for god's sake just get over it will you fair enough someone has sent a worm that has hijacked machines to process SETI work and deliver the credit to some person.

Distributed computing is all about Science not credits so so long as these results are crunching science I don't see it as a problem.

I do wish people would use security on the internet as well to stop this thing happening but its not going to happen for a long time.
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Message 241659 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 19:32:48 UTC - in response to Message 241616.  

Interesting, a new team member! http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=122736

Maybe to lover the RAC per user? :)
Or to support Carsten in this case.
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Message 241661 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 19:37:02 UTC - in response to Message 241659.  

Interesting, a new team member! http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=122736

Maybe to lover the RAC per user? :)
Or to support Carsten in this case.


well that team was given a massive advertisment in this thread not surprised it has attracted someone else
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Profile Fred G
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Message 241682 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 20:33:25 UTC - in response to Message 241634.  

for god's sake just get over it will you fair enough someone has sent a worm that has hijacked machines to process SETI work and deliver the credit to some person.

Distributed computing is all about Science not credits so so long as these results are crunching science I don't see it as a problem.

I agree it's about the Science and not the credits, however, in reality it's competition that motivates the majority of our crunchers. Taking away the competition by allowing cheaters to continue will ruin SETI. Either they will go to another DC project or they will start cheating also. Regardless the fact that the science is getting done it has to be stopped here and now.

>Fred

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Message 241688 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 20:38:58 UTC - in response to Message 241682.  

for god's sake just get over it will you fair enough someone has sent a worm that has hijacked machines to process SETI work and deliver the credit to some person.

Distributed computing is all about Science not credits so so long as these results are crunching science I don't see it as a problem.

I agree it's about the Science and not the credits, however, in reality it's competition that motivates the majority of our crunchers. Taking away the competition by allowing cheaters to continue will ruin SETI. Either they will go to another DC project or they will start cheating also. Regardless the fact that the science is getting done it has to be stopped here and now.

>Fred


Maybe so but everyone knows this is a false account so just ignore it when comparing stats
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Message 241695 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 21:16:10 UTC - in response to Message 241634.  

for god's sake just get over it will you fair enough someone has sent a worm that has hijacked machines to process SETI work and deliver the credit to some person.

Distributed computing is all about Science not credits so so long as these results are crunching science I don't see it as a problem.

Advancing Science is the goal in Distributed Computing, but only by choices made by the persons donating their computer time to a specific project. The perception of each volunteer is that they will add some small bit of proccesed information, get some kind of benefit for doing so, and not be harmed by doing this.

Volunteers don't like the idea of their accounts being hijacked for someone elses "Science". Non volunteers don't want to run work for anyone, let alone without their knowledge. To the average computer user,the perception of Science equals just another malware program, when it sneaks in the backdoor.


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Message 241700 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 21:30:12 UTC - in response to Message 241688.  
Last modified: 3 Feb 2006, 21:35:47 UTC

Maybe so but everyone knows this is a false account so just ignore it when comparing stats


That is just notgoodenough.com. I guess I haven't gotten that worked up over this yet, because I expect the perp to have his account deleted if found guilty.

Anything less sends a bad message to the community. It also sends a bad message to contributors, who rely on the stats as their main reward and motivation for contributing their CPU cycles to the project.

If Berkeley tolerates this with a "slap on the wrist", my entire image of them will change drastically.

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Message 241778 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 22:51:12 UTC - in response to Message 241634.  

Distributed computing is all about Science not credits so so long as these results are crunching science I don't see it as a problem.

In other words, it's perfectly okay if I hijack your computer to do my work.

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Message 241783 - Posted: 3 Feb 2006, 23:04:29 UTC - in response to Message 241778.  

Distributed computing is all about Science not credits so so long as these results are crunching science I don't see it as a problem.

In other words, it's perfectly okay if I hijack your computer to do my work.


You can try but you wouldn't succeed I'm not as stupid as other people on the net with no protection
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Message boards : Number crunching : Do we have a Boinc virus?


 
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