No Malice intended.
Just Got to Rant….

I have notice in both boards here and Q&P that crunchers ask for help don't give their machine specs and you check to see what they have and they’ve hidden them.

Can someone really do malice to their units?

Do they hide their machines because they are using machines they don't have permission
to use?

When my children were going through their problem years they would come to me and ask my advice they learned to tell me every detail otherwise I will give them bad advice.

Garbage in Garbage out!

I just don't get it.


Timmy

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That's one of the big unanswered questions in the universe...

Makes no sense to me.

In most cases it could be related to the "competition" part of running this kind of programs.

Whether people admit it or not, there's always that little "bug" inside us that makes us feel a little better if we are one step ahead of the person that once was ahead of us in the rankings (otherwise, the rankings would lose their purpose).

Hiding the specs of the machines could represent an edge in regard to the other "competitors".

There's no vital information being released when computers are visible, so, it shouldn't be a problem to leave them visible, unless you wouldn't want the other "competitors" to know what kind of hardware you had.

It's a good marketing move by the one's in charge of the project, because people are always trying to do a litlle better, contributing with more processing power to the project.

You guys are assuming people have specific calculated intentions to keep / hide information from others on the project. I think the explanation is far simpler. At the creation of your account, it’s easy to make the decision to hide your computer information without knowing that this info isn’t much of a security risk. Can someone use this info for nefarious purposes? Who knows? Especially when first signing up! Most people out there will take a better safe than sorry approach to this, and select to have it hidden, if that isn’t the default already. Having long since forgotten making this selection, most users encountering a problem later on will simply blurt out a request for help and omit their technical specs. It’s an honest enough mistake, especially for those not familiar with such things.

As it is an all or nothing play, in my case you could be allowed to see all of my computers but one...

Possible reasons :
-divers
-maybe experimental processors?
-maybe experimental boards
- or whatsoever...

(big grin)
PS : I'm never interested to look into an other man's wallet...

If a cruncher is sophisticated enough to have special and secret hardware
10 to 1 they could teach us all a few things and not bother asking for help.

I'm just saying if you’re going to hide your hardware, please include some basic information in your request....



Respectfully,

Timmy

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David really got the gist of it...

I seriously doubt its from fear of competition, the data is too incomplete to allow people to design boinc crunching machines, and even if it was who would waste the money to buy top of the line machines geared towards that? and if someone does, why would someone who is also contributing to this want to impede them?


There is one security volnerability in showing your machines, increasing the chance of a targeted maliciousware. When someone writes a malicious program that have to use tools already there and meant for constructive things (almost always). So they exploit the volnerabilities of like hardware and software. If someone were to want to attack as many people as possible, they would compile a list of all the specs in here, and then sort them into groups, and write a virus or something of sorts to attack the most common one.

However for that they would have to probably hijack the servers. They also would likely not need that much info for the specs, since usually its software related (ie, they could just make something that attacks winXP machines and maybe even macOSX machines or Mandrake/redhat linux if those are even possible to attack. Since its obvious those would be the most common...)

Its a very far fetched very unrealistic fear... But remember, alot of people don't really understand much, and usually the people who explain things to them are trying to sell them something (person asks employee in compusa about computer secuirty and gets a respone like: "yes sir, those hackers are really dangerous sir, you should buy this and this and this to protect yourself, and did you know they can do this and that to you...")

There is another good point ( esp. in my case ;) )
I would have no problem to show my computers except one. Only the name of one computer is enough to guess a naming scheme used in a major company. That is truly confidential information i agreed to keep secret. Because i have no choice to show computers individually you won't see any of them. It's that simple.



greetz, Uli

Once said, something is much harder to make unsaid. I make it a general policy throughout most of my "data" activities to not reveal data unless I have to. I can always show my hand later, if necessary. Compared to most folk I know, I get very little spam.

That said, of course one needs to reveal relevant info to get a decent diagnosis. But why advertise info BEFORE one has trouble? Especially when it's hard to know who might be looking....

And, in line with Ulrich's situation, if you normally reveal info, and then suddenly don't, people can notice a change in pattern and "look harder." If you're always discreet, they just figure you're just being your typically paranoid, oops, private self, and then they don't notice when you ARE up to something that needs hiding! ;-)

-R

> There is another good point ( esp. in my case ;) )
> I would have no problem to show my computers except one. Only the name of one
> computer is enough to guess a naming scheme used in a major company. That is
> truly confidential information i agreed to keep secret. Because i have no
> choice to show computers individually you won't see any of them. It's that
> simple.
>
Since when are the names of anybodies computers visible to anyone but the user themselves? Can you find out the names of my computers I've used to crunch Seti, because I haven't chose to hide them?

To see them, wouldn't somebody have to hijack the server? And if they did that would the names of people's computers be a top three priority for a malicious attacker?

There is one security volnerability in showing your machines, increasing the
chance of a targeted maliciousware. When someone writes a malicious program
that have to use tools already there and meant for constructive things (almost
always). So they exploit the volnerabilities of like hardware and software. If
someone were to want to attack as many people as possible,



But even if you hide the names of your computers, the names exist in a file somewhere in a data base etc, if they are that smart to write a malicious program they'll get the names/info no matter what.


If someone asks for help and dosn't provide the basic info II.E CPU P1, P2 even worse 386 486 etc and software 2000 xp or 98 I would click on thier profile and I will be able to help them. I could care less about a puter name.


Timmy
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If you are using computers which are part of a domain then the domain is tagged on after the computer name.
I can well understand sys admins not wanting this publicly displayed.

Perhaps if there was an option to have a friendly name instead of the real name of the computer then more people would show them.

As this project matures more corporates will come on board and this will become more of an issue.

I know that others are not supposed to be able to see the computer names but they are in the DB.
An option to not divulge the real computername/domain to the project DB should be considered.

> If you are using computers which are part of a domain then the domain is
> tagged on after the computer name.
> I can well understand sys admins not wanting this publicly displayed.
>
> Perhaps if there was an option to have a friendly name instead of the real
> name of the computer then more people would show them.
>
> As this project matures more corporates will come on board and this will
> become more of an issue.
>
> I know that others are not supposed to be able to see the computer names but
> they are in the DB.
> An option to not divulge the real computername/domain to the project DB should
> be considered.
>
>
>

Here's a good poit of view and feature to be considered once the bugs are all gone.

ok, to the posters of the last 6 posts... go here:
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/hosts_user.php?userid=138754
http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/sah/show_host_detail.php?hostid=143141


This is an example of someone ELSE'S list.

When you go to your own computer listing you see their names etc.
This can ONLY be done through your account info, which requires someone to log in. Which requires them to know your ID string, but not a password, but they cannot match it to you since it is a really long alphanumeric code that has no connection to you aside from a note in their database that it is yours.

When I go to public computer listing and see someone else's as can be done on the two links ebove, I only see the credit, its rank in comparison to other computers owned by that person, type and number of CPUs, OS installed on it, memory, cache, computation speed, and upload speed. Thats it!