I am running several BOINC projects on my three laptops and I have a score of more than a million till now. But recent revelations in the news is making me apprehensive. I am beginning to wonder if any of the projects that I run is actually going through my hard disk on fishing expeditions. Who is going to assure me that all projects run by BOINC are guaranteed not to act as spies? And who will assure me that projects like Einstein@home looks for binary pulsars and not for whatever the spies want to search for in the internet?

For safety sake I have even taped off all the cameras should any of the programs be bugged to take photos without my knowledge.

If I don't receive a satisfactory reply I will stop all the BOINC projects and uninstall the software from all my machines.

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The only safe way in which you can protect yourself from things like this, is by disconnecting your computer from the internet. Added safety will be gained by burying your computer 15 meters under the ice of the North Pole.

In other words, we cannot give you a guarantee that all of the projects are 100% legit and that they do what they say they do. No one can.
How can you be sure that the operating system you have doesn't have back-doors? How can you be sure that all the software you run doesn't send the complete contents of your hard drive back to its owners? How can you be sure that whatever you say on the telephone isn't being recorded by parties unknown?

There's a time for paranoia, and there's a time for letting go.
That said, do you have anything that's worth it to sit secretly hidden in a niche of a directory on your hard drive? ;-)

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Thanks for your re-assuring post.

I value my privacy. Whether or not I have any secret is entire my own business and does not concern anyone else. I guess the same goes for everyone else that I know. And I know of much better ways to protect my systems that what you have suggested, though I am still grateful to you for your thoughtfulness.

All I want to know is whether I have Trojans running in the name of BOINC projects. Of late I have been dismayed by the news that many trusted companies have betrayed the very trust that we as public had reposed in them.

I would still like to wait for someone of some standing in the community reassuring me that BOINC projects are clean. I value my own contributions to the various projects that I participate in, but obviously I would not compromise my own privacy at any cost.

Also, I would like the projects to explain what is the data they send, in what format and what is the processing that is done in our machines before the results are reported. This at present seems like a black-box that I am not very comfortable with.

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Also, I would like the projects to explain what is the data they send, in what format and what is the processing that is done in our machines before the results are reported. This at present seems like a black-box that I am not very comfortable with.

The BOINC code is open source, for anyone to inspect. And there are enough outsiders looking at the code.

But you have a point, that a lot of BOINC projects don't have the source code available for others to inspect.

But total security is impossible.
With enough resources, it will be possible to hack into your computer no matter what to do.

And everything is a black box, most OS are.

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TThrottle The way to control your CPU and GPU temperature.
BoincTasks The best view of BOINC.
My other activities

a lot of BOINC projects don't have the source code available for others to inspect.

Is there some way to find out which are those ones?

But total security is impossible.
With enough resources, it will be possible to hack into your computer no matter what to do.

My computer is of course the least private of all my assets, but still my freedom and my privacy are too important to me to gift away. If as a society we realize this and respect the privacy of others then this world would be a safer place. The violence in the universe can then stay with the multitude of pulsars and black-holes that the BOINC projects are discovering.

Thanks friend.

For safety sake I have even taped off all the cameras should any of the programs be bugged to take photos without my knowledge.

I think you need psychiatric help.

I do apologise if you a just a troll and not mentally ill BTW, it's so difficult to tell those two apart.

;)

Cheers,

Al.

http://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/BOINC_Security

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Thanks!

If you are concerned about BOINC (or any other software, really) looking through your files and sending data to someone without your knowledge or permission, you might consider using an encryption scheme of some sort. You could use TrueCrypt or AxCrypt or similar to keep your personal documents private.

As mentioned, BOINC is open source, and so are some of the project applications, so you could limit yourself to running only the open source apps that you or someone you trust have examined.

Running BOINC in a virtual machine sandbox is also a good idea. Your processors and RAM will take a small performance hit, but it will give you peace of mind.

Running BOINC in a virtual machine sandbox is also a good idea.

That's a good idea. My OS is Ubuntu 12.10, and I have Virtualbox running Windows XP. I will install Boinc Tasks there and run the projects from there. Right now I am sharing my /home directory with the VM, but I guess I should disconnect that.

I once tried running the projects both from the Linux as well as the VM, but the machine crashed. So I uninstalled the Boinc from the VM. Now I guess I should install the projects in the VM and uninstall them from Linux.

I just want to know if LHC, Milkyway and Einstein are doing what they are supposed to do and not sifting through emails looking for whatever. Can anyone assure me of that? I confess I have lost the ability and the patience to go through source code and find it out myself, even though I come from a generation that used punch cards and did their own assembly language programs, and when IBM still owned PCDOS.

Thanks a lot for your suggestion.

For safety sake I have even taped off all the cameras should any of the programs be bugged to take photos without my knowledge.


I think you need psychiatric help.

What say, now that you have some more insight on how MS and others have been conning us all? Given the right access and backdoors, it is very simple for anyone to take control of not just the camera but your entire machine.

The BOINC programs are allowed to operate in our machines based on trust. I would indeed need psychiatric help if after what we have learnt in the past month I still maintain the same level of blind trust in everyone without some verification.

Switch to Linux, use TOR browser, and use ixquick for searching. I did this quite a few years back. Control how and how often BOINC connects to the internet and it should be fine.

Take care!