| 1 | | = Cross-project identification = |
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| 2 | | |
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| 3 | | Leaderboard sites may show statistics from several BOINC projects, and may want to show credit for users and/or hosts summed across all the projects in which they participate. |
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| 4 | | |
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| 5 | | == Cross-project identification of hosts == #hosts |
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| 6 | | |
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| 7 | | Each host generates an '''internal cross-project ID''', |
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| 8 | | which is the MD5 of the concatenation of its domain name, IP address, free disk space, and a timestamp. |
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| 9 | | This is reported to the projects to which the host is attached. |
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| 10 | | The projects convert it to an '''external cross-project ID''' |
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| 11 | | by hashing it with the owner's email address (this is intended to prevent spoofing). |
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| 12 | | The external ID is exported in statistics files. |
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| 13 | | |
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| 14 | | Whenever a scheduler reply indicates that it has generated a new host record |
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| 15 | | (e.g. because a bad RPC seqno suggests that this is a duplicate host) |
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| 16 | | the client generates a new internal host CPID. |
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| 17 | | |
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| 18 | | == Cross-project identification of participants == #users |
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| 19 | | |
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| 20 | | Accounts on different projects are considered equivalent if they have the same email address (we have considered other concepts, but they all lead to extreme complexity). |
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| 21 | | |
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| 22 | | Projects can't export email addresses in statistics files; email addresses are private. It's also not desirable to export hashed email addresses, because spammers could enumerate feasible email addresses and compare them with the hashed addresses. |
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| 23 | | |
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| 24 | | Instead, BOINC uses the following system: |
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| 25 | | |
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| 26 | | * Each account is assigned an 'internal cross-project identifier' (CPID) on the server when it's created; it's a long random string. |
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| 27 | | * When a scheduling server replies to an RPC, it includes the account's CPID, its email address, and its creation time. These are stored in the client state file. |
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| 28 | | * When the BOINC client makes an RPC request to a scheduling server, it scans the accounts with the same email address, finds the one with the oldest creation time, and sends the CPID stored with that account. |
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| 29 | | * If the scheduling server receives a CPID different from the one in its database, it updates the database with the new CPID. |
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| 30 | | * User elements in the [XmlStats XML statistics data] include a hash of (email address, CPID); this 'external' CPID serves as a unique identifier of all accounts with that email address. (The last step, hashing with the email address, prevents people from impersonating other people). |
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| 31 | | |
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| 32 | | This system provides cross-project identification based on email address, without publicizing any information from which email addresses could be derived. |
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| | 1 | [[T(MovedToMediaWiki|Cross-project_identification)]] |
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