My boss won’t let me run BOINC at work because he believes it could have backdoors or built in spy-ware. Is there a site that has posted results of security tests on BOINC? He’s a real Apple/Macintosh fan and would be more apt to believe results done by a Mac user but any article covering security test on BOINC could be helpful.
Thank you,
-Ben

I can tell you that the builds of BOINC I produce for the http://boinc.berkeley.edu/ download sites do not have any spyware or adware.

That said, BOINC is only as secure as the projects you run.

I can also say that BOINC had to pass an IBM security audit before they would even allow it to be used with http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/.

We are in the process of trying to get them to schedule a yearly audit of the code base.

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----- Rom
BOINC Development Team, U.C. Berkeley
My Blog

Hi Ben

I'm a mod on the 3 ClimatePrediction forums (this project runs on boinc) and have read a high proportion of posts, and all thread titles, for 2 1/2 years. To my knowledge no virus or malware has been reported by our members from either boinc or project software. Our members use every available version of AV and firewalls, so if there were ever a problem, I think we'd know about it pretty quickly. Most members include boinc and their projects in their AV scans.

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Hi Ben

I'm a mod on the 3 ClimatePrediction forums (this project runs on boinc) and have read a high proportion of posts, and all thread titles, for 2 1/2 years. To my knowledge no virus or malware has been reported by our members from either boinc or project software. Our members use every available version of AV and firewalls, so if there were ever a problem, I think we'd know about it pretty quickly. Most members include boinc and their projects in their AV scans.

I have been scanning the message boards even longer than that. I have seen no reports of virii or malware in the BOINC package.

There was a virus that installed BOINC on infected computers. However even in that case the version of BOINC installed was a basically a standard version and did not cause any problems.

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BOINC WIKI

BOINCing since 2002/12/8