I recently reviewed the list of current projects. I fully embrace the BOINC idea for legitimate projects, but get concerned when I see projects listed as 'Private'. There is a concern that some projects may not be what they suggest. Are we providing processing power for nefarious efforts?

Don't get me wrong. I have been contributing to SETI and Rosetta for a long time. I trust those projects, but...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_distributed_computing_projects

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The World Has Gone Crazy!! We Need a New Place to Live!! Join Our Team!!

Your comments would be far better posted in one of the BOINC forum, rather than that belonging to a specific project. Take a loo at : http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

The way I understand it we have the choice in BOINC regarding which projects our computers will used to crunch data in. So far I have chosen only to participate in the seti@home project. I might participate in a "private" project if given a description of what is involved.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

I am taking part in 7 projects, all public. I took part in the AQUA project managed by D-Wave, which sells a so called quantum computer for 100 million dollars, and it disappeared shortly after the sale of the first computer to Lockheed-Martin.Maybe they objected to have some of the computer's algorithms made public.
Tullio

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I agree with you Bob. I do the same thing, but I have to keep wondering if there are projects that are 'listed' as legitimate projects, but are feeding research in terrorist activities.

I don't have tin foil hats in my wardrobe, but this is the conservative side of me given the trend of Internet activities.

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The World Has Gone Crazy!! We Need a New Place to Live!! Join Our Team!!

I only cruch Seti@home these days. I'll crunch Orbit@home as well when the project starts running again.

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rOZZ
Music
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I agree with you Bob. I do the same thing, but I have to keep wondering if there are projects that are 'listed' as legitimate projects, but are feeding research in terrorist activities.

I don't have tin foil hats in my wardrobe, but this is the conservative side of me given the trend of Internet activities.

The risk is there with any application... BOINC-based ones are no different. Only way to avoid it is to compile your own OS, drivers and apps. from code you audited yourself. I think that's a bit much for most of us.
(And even then, the compiler and/or BIOS may still compromise you.)

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I'm not worried about terrorists using distributed computing, the NSA is watching. What is a very real concern is a private project making money from free volunteer computing. The reason I only crunch SETI is I can't see how anyone can make money from this.

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The reason I only crunch SETI is I can't see how anyone can make money from this.

BitCoin mining would be an obvious way a DC project could make money from sneaky crunching... the mined coins could be immediately turned into cash.

One of the reasons that I stick with SAH is that UC Berkeley's, and the team's, stature in the scientific and academic community (ie as the developer of the entire BOINC platform) makes this one of the, if not the, most trustworthy project and the least likely to be abused.

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BitCoin mining would be an obvious way a DC project could make money from sneaky crunching... the mined coins could be immediately turned into cash.

BitCoin supposedly benefits the cruncher directly; it is like a job. Some private projects like "DrugDiscovery@home" I wouldn't touch without compensation upfront. That smells like a pharmaceutical company hustle.

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I'm not worried about terrorists using distributed computing, the NSA is watching. What is a very real concern is a private project making money from free volunteer computing. The reason I only crunch SETI is I can't see how anyone can make money from this.

+100. Except for the NSA. And the latter you said is one of the reasons I crunch Seti.

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rOZZ
Music
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BitCoin supposedly benefits the cruncher directly; it is like a job.

Not what I meant... the algorithm and source code for BitCoin mining is available on the internet. Programmer(s) could create a fake BOINC distributed computing project which pretended to do something but then mined and uploaded the "coins" to them.

There has already been malware found in the wild that does exactly this. Of course, it's quicker to steal already mined BitCoins so that kind is far more prevalent...

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Not what I meant... the algorithm and source code for BitCoin mining is available on the internet. Programmer(s) could create a fake BOINC distributed computing project which pretended to do something but then mined and uploaded the "coins" to them.

Oh my I didn't think about that. I assume even a legitimate project could slip a few BitCoin programs in.

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Oh my I didn't think about that.

Well I hope no one else does either... in a bad way. :^)

I assume even a legitimate project could slip a few BitCoin programs in.

Ya know... that's a good idea for smaller distributed computing projects to meet expenses, as long as they are very up-front about it that a portion of participant crunching will be used to generate bitcoin to pay the essential bills, and declare all the revenue. If it was credited like the rest of the work, I don't see why any one would object if it was for the good of the project.

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I wonder if Tsar Putin has infiltrated US with his "optimized" apps. BTW why do they all wear masks?

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