Posts by David Anderson

InfoMessage
1) Message boards : Questions and problems : Newbie - Mass deployment
Message 116145
Posted 22 days ago by ProfileDavid Anderson 		John:
I think BOINC would be ideal for your purpose:

- It has 'computing preferences' that let you limit the % of CPU time used
(or the number of cores, the memory used, etc.)
- You can also specify times of day or days of week to compute

These can be set per computer, or per account, and can be changed via a Web API.

For the set and forget part, you can use Science United:
https://scienceunited.org/
You can "attach" a BOINC client to a Science United account,
which has preferences for what sciences areas or geographical locations
you want to contribute to.
Based on this, Science United tells the client what projects to compute for,
including new projects as they arise.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have;
feel free to email me at davea@berkeley.edu

-- David
2) Message boards : BOINC Manager : config messed up after upgrade
Message 115683
Posted 25 Mar 2025 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		I attached to LHC dev, got some jobs,
and stopped and restarted the client,
all with no complaints about URL.

So I can't repro this problem.
If you're still seeing it, tell me how to repro it.
3) Message boards : BOINC Manager : config messed up after upgrade
Message 115678
Posted 25 Mar 2025 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		What's the invitation code for LHC@home dev? (email me)
Then I can try to repro.

Or send me:
- the name of the account file and its contents
- the master URL of the project in client_state.xml
- the contents of the sched_reply_*.xml file
4) Message boards : News : Lines of code visualization
Message 115628
Posted 16 Mar 2025 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		Vitalii made <a href=https://github.com/AenBleidd/Scripts/blob/master/BOINCGitStatsToVideo.py>a visualization of the number of lines of code in BOINC</a> going back to 2002.
5) Message boards : News : Grafana project dashboards
Message 115448
Posted 15 Feb 2025 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		Check out <a href=https://grafana.kiska.pw/d/boinc/boinc?orgId=1>Grafana project dashboards</a> showing time-varying graphs of project info such as number of unsent and in-progress jobs.
6) Message boards : News : Contributor history video
Message 115120
Posted 2 Jan 2025 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		Vitalii made <a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DhisMpUlN0>a video showing the top 25 BOINC committers</a>, based on CVS, Subversion and Git data, every month going back to 2002.
7) Message boards : News : 50 new papers from Rosetta@home
Message 115083
Posted 27 Dec 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		David Baker's research group published over <a href=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/pubs.php#Rosetta@home>50 journal papers</a> since our last update. Wow! (And thanks to Alex Piskun for maintaining the list of publications by BOINC projects.)
8) Message boards : News : Rosetta@home leader wins Nobel Prize
Message 114670
Posted 9 Oct 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		Dr. David Baker of the University of Washington, creator of <a href=https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/>Rosetta@home</a>, has <a href=https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/09/science/nobel-prize-chemistry.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Q04.FgOe.5GEIdTtspdfq>won the 2024 Nobel prize in Chemistry</a>. Congratulations!
9) Message boards : News : Should BOINC boycott Russian projects?
Message 114505
Posted 10 Sep 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		This has been suggested. We're not going to do it, but the idea <a href=russia.php>merits thought and discussion</a>.
10) Message boards : News : Windows malware reported
Message 114314
Posted 22 Jul 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		An analyst at Huntress send me the following instructions for removing the malware. I hope they are useful.

---------------------
Several things will be needed to remove the malware.

1) Delete the malicious scheduled tasks and services. The names of the tasks should follow the patterns outlined in the blog post, but they will all vary slightly so we can't say exactly what they will be called. Look for recently created tasks executing binaries named as described (example "SecurityHealthService.exe") in our blog post or executing encoded or obfuscated powershell with conhost.exe. Example Task Names: Google_Maintenance_Worker, System_Health_Service_12345534359, Enable-StorageBusDisk. These may appear to be similar to legitimate tasks/services so be careful not to remove the legitimate ones.

2) Some of the commands in the scheduled tasks may use powershell to "get-content" stored in directories such as "c:\users\<user>\appdata\local\Microsoft\[random_word]". Examine this directory for suspicious files such as "Enable-StorageBusDisk.log" matching the name of the scheduled task that executes the powershell command.

3) Audit the "c:\users\<user>\appdata\roaming\" directory for related files and subdirectories (e.g. a folder called" Secure Transaction Systems") and remove any suspicious files. Look specifically for BOINC.exe (and renamed versions of it) and remove all related files in the directory.

4) Look for an "update.js" file in the Downloads directory and remove if found.

This isn't guaranteed to remove the threat and all changes made to the system, as we don't know what all has happened exactly on each machine, as that will vary slightly. The tactics used may change as a result of the blog post as well. But this should be a good guide to get started removing at least the persistence associated with the malware campaign. As long as there is not an active network connection to the malicious server from either powershell or BOINC software, the threat should be reduced greatly. The best method to guarantee the threat is completely removed is to reinstall the operating system or restore from a known good backup copy whenever possible.
11) Message boards : News : Windows malware reported
Message 114285
Posted 19 Jul 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		A computer security company called Huntress released an <a href=https://www.huntress.com/blog/fake-browser-updates-lead-to-boinc-volunteer-computing-software>analysis of how this malware works</a>.

It confirms that this attack is not due to any vulnerability in BOINC.

The report doesn't describe how to remove the malware.
12) Message boards : News : Windows malware reported
Message 114191
Posted 26 Jun 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		We have received several reports of malware that installs and runs the 8.0.2 BOINC client on Windows computers. We are investigating this; we currently don't know how the malware works or how to defeat it. We'll report whatever we learn here.

This is not a vulnerability in BOINC; rather, it's malware that illegally installs BOINC.
13) Message boards : News : User Manual moved to Github
Message 114133
Posted 15 Jun 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		As part of our effort to move documentation to Github, we have moved the User Manual from <a href=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/User_manual>Mediawiki on the UCB server</a> to <a href=https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/wiki/User_manual>Markdown on Github</a>.
14) Message boards : News : BOINC client 8.0.2 released
Message 114083
Posted 30 May 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		The 8.0.2 version of the BOINC client has been released for all platforms. Download it <a href=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php>here</a>. Release notes are <a href=https://github.com/BOINC/boinc/wiki/Client-release-notes>here</a>.
15) Message boards : News : BOINC Workshop 2024
Message 113968
Posted 30 Apr 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		The 20th annual BOINC Workshop will be held 29-31 May,
at CERN in Geneva. <a href=https://indico.cern.ch/event/1379525/overview>Learn more and register</a>.
16) Message boards : News : BOINC wins a prize
Message 113910
Posted 18 Apr 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		BOINC is <a href=https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/stocktaking/Prizes/2024/Champions?jts=ZJZ09V&idx=15&page=14>a prize winner</a> in the WSIS competition for E-Science projects. Congratulations to all of us!
17) Message boards : News : BOINC needs your vote (by Thu 4 April) for a UN-sponsored award
Message 113824
Posted 25 Mar 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is a United Nations-sponsored initiative aimed at building inclusive and equitable information societies worldwide. BOINC has been nominated for <a href=https://www.itu.int/net4/wsis/stocktaking/Prizes/2024> a prize at the 2024 WSIS forum</a>, and has passed initial hurdles; the last step involves public voting.

Vote for BOINC! Instructions are <a href=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x9Xi3tq7Y9dlDD0Xb0Ul0yYCXct5pDqIqssqARxvrXg/edit>here</a>.
18) Message boards : News : BOINC in schools
Message 113601
Posted 13 Feb 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		Registration is open for <a href=https://computationmoonshot.org/>The Computation Moonshot</a>, a competition for high schools which encourages students to learn about scientific computing.
19) Message boards : News : YouTube video on BOINC server setup
Message 113586
Posted 11 Feb 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		A new <a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbAM-T09Tkk>YouTube video</a> shows how to set up a BOINC server. Thanks to Alex Bryan for producing this.
20) Message boards : News : BOINC 7.24.3 released for Mac
Message 113520
Posted 30 Jan 2024 by ProfileDavid Anderson 		This version fixes a problem that causes GPU apps to fail after a Mac OS upgrade to Sonoma. Download it <a href=https://boinc.berkeley.edu/download.php>here</a>.
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