Zombies (Oct 29 2007)

Message boards : Technical News : Zombies (Oct 29 2007)
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Profile Matt Lebofsky
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Message 669057 - Posted: 29 Oct 2007, 21:17:47 UTC

There were minor minor hiccups over the weekend, mostly due to a concentrated bunch of noisy workunits being pushed through the pipeline. Other than that - no big server issues to mention.

Some people discovered a single BOINC client creating new, redundant hosts at the rate of one every few seconds. In the grand scheme of things this is no big deal. Bob usually checks for such things every so often and removes the zombie hosts to keep our hosts database as trim as possible. This case was slightly unusual due to the creation rate. I contacted the participant in question and we confirmed an old client on a system running Vista was to blame.

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Message 669058 - Posted: 29 Oct 2007, 21:21:16 UTC

Just in time for Hallowe'en!

ZOMBIE COMPUTERS!
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Profile Fuzzy Hollynoodles
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Message 669070 - Posted: 29 Oct 2007, 21:56:58 UTC
Last modified: 29 Oct 2007, 21:57:57 UTC



Thanks for addressing this problem, Matt.


"I'm trying to maintain a shred of dignity in this world." - Me

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Message 669092 - Posted: 29 Oct 2007, 22:45:55 UTC

In boinc's design is there a failsafe for this sort of event, or does it always require various levels of human intervention, as described below, to prevent a server 'crash'?
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Jesse Viviano

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Message 669094 - Posted: 29 Oct 2007, 22:47:27 UTC - in response to Message 669058.  

Just in time for Hallowe'en!

ZOMBIE COMPUTERS!

When I think about zombie computers, I think about botnets (for example, the botnet that the Storm worm built, whose sheer number of zombies is enough to spook even Bruce Schneier), DDoS attacks, open proxies, and spam.

By the way, I remember one piece of malware that installed SETI@home (back before BOINC was even around) on many people's computers without permission to boost his or her stats. The same thing happened with Folding@home. I don't know what happened with the SETI@home cheater, but the Folding@home cheater got his credits zeroed out.
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John McLeod VII
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Message 669153 - Posted: 29 Oct 2007, 23:51:06 UTC - in response to Message 669094.  

Just in time for Hallowe'en!

ZOMBIE COMPUTERS!

When I think about zombie computers, I think about botnets (for example, the botnet that the Storm worm built, whose sheer number of zombies is enough to spook even Bruce Schneier), DDoS attacks, open proxies, and spam.

By the way, I remember one piece of malware that installed SETI@home (back before BOINC was even around) on many people's computers without permission to boost his or her stats. The same thing happened with Folding@home. I don't know what happened with the SETI@home cheater, but the Folding@home cheater got his credits zeroed out.

We have had a similar experience here and all projects except one cooperated very nicely when it was pointed out to them and deleted the account of the offending user and zeroed the stats.


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Message boards : Technical News : Zombies (Oct 29 2007)


 
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