Posts by Kevin Feathers

1) Message boards : Promotion : DeCryptolocker by BOINC? (Message 54332)
Posted 4 Jun 2014 by Kevin Feathers
Post:
Aye, back how would be great. However my experience amongst users even in an office environment are not computer literate enough to understand that.
2) Message boards : Promotion : DeCryptolocker by BOINC? (Message 54329)
Posted 3 Jun 2014 by Kevin Feathers
Post:
I fully understand that Boinc! is primarily a scientific tool and long may that continue, but wouldn't it be nice if we could dedicate some of our processing power to brute force a file a member of the public has submitted as they are held ransom by cyber criminals?

Cryptolocker is a real menace and uses 1024-bit RSA encryption and the private key doesn't exist on the victims computer, not in the memory or the hard drive. Only supercomputers will decrypt the files in reasonable time meaning the public are held to ransom to pay €300 for the private key. Each PC that fell prey to this attack needs a unique private key to decrypt the files.

That is where we come in. We have the required horsepower, more than enough in fact. Isn't there anybody out there who can work with Berkeley University, AMD and nVidia to get a decryptor working with Boinc? A website where a victim can upload just one of the encrypted files and then it is added to the queue and our PCs will begin the brute force method?

The beauty of Boinc is the ecosystem in place can tell how many people participate in the project, and thus that will instruct different processors to try a different range. When one of us cracks it, it gets sent back as successful... if we fail, it gets sent back and that range for that file is struck off and need not be attempted again so a new range is issued.

By the way, Cryptolocker is the daddy of malware right now. It is big news. The creators are banking on the idea nobody will have a nuke to blitz it, well guess what, we have that nuke and it is now a bleeding powerful one! When we crack the key the site that Berkeley created for submitted files will tell that person it is mission successful and give them the key they need to unlock their files and not have to pay the criminals.

The whole project can even evolve, working against future variations created by different authors. Now that would be a promotion, that sort of Boinc project would be global news!!
3) Message boards : The Lounge : Multicore Projects (Message 33765)
Posted 14 Jul 2010 by Kevin Feathers
Post:
Hi, are there any projects that can dedicate all processor cores to a single task?

Perhaps it would be an idea to keep this updated for others who may be interested?
4) Message boards : Projects : News on project outages (Message 33764)
Posted 14 Jul 2010 by Kevin Feathers
Post:
I got some Collatz work nits this morning, but nah... it's gone again.
5) Message boards : Questions and problems : Boinc on my Sony PlayStation 3 (Message 33740)
Posted 11 Jul 2010 by Kevin Feathers
Post:
I nopt really sure how helpful a PS3 would be anyway. Let's consider an XMB (PS3 OS) app is never made and we are left with Linux on PS3. That means there is just 256MB of Memory to play with. Some projects use alot more than 256MB and we haven't even considered Linux's memory footprint.

Running Boinc on a PS3 is not the best idea, if there was an XMB app then it would be a different story because it could use the RSX chip but it would require BOINC and it's partners to approach Sony Cumputer Entertainment America, and basically ask them if they would mind lending an coding engineer.

This generation of consoles are merely a prototype for what is coming next from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo... it is in the next generation that you will want to see about using BOINC. Those consoles (or machines, because let's be honest, the PS3 is more than a console) will have higher amounts of memory and the PS3 is rumoured to be having a few different processors... each of them more powerful than the Cell so no matter which one, it will be great at crunching.

But BOINC need to make a move on this, not Sony, not Microsoft, not Nintendo. Sony did it for Folding@Home, they may just consider doing it for the projects involved with BOINC.
6) Message boards : Questions and problems : ATI GPU Warning: Catalyst 10.6 Issues (Message 33739)
Posted 11 Jul 2010 by Kevin Feathers
Post:
Hello people. There is an issue with the new drivers for ATI cards, especially the HD5870 and HD5970 models.

Catalyst 10.6 breaks the work units for DNETC@Home and me and couple of other people have confirmed that it is indeed the new version of Catalyst. We have rolled back to 10.5 and once again all GPU Work Units are getting completed with no real issues.

Please let me explain to those who are not very clued up about when to update your Graphics Card drivers. The most sensible way to do it is.... if it ain't broke, don't fix it. That meaning, if your current drivers are working fine don't update. GPU drivers are probably one of the most fickle updates you will find in computing. The previous version of Catalyst 10.5 are the most stable but even then it took ATI 3 revisions of Catalyst 10.5 to get it right. The driver most stable before 10.5 was actually 9.7 and so you see if you don't need to update, don't update.

If you really want to install version of Catalyst... go 10.5. Performance improvement is minimal but the cards might be a bit quieter, meaning they are running cooler.

If you are more a gamer than a cruncher, still don't go for Catalyst 10.6. It breaks DiRT2 in Steam and that is just one game that me and couple of others managed to prove was ATI Drivers.

To come to this conclusion we flicked between 9.7, 10.5 and 10.6. Using each driver about 3 times each on each of our PCs. We all got the same results with 9.7 and 10.5 being stable. We have informed ATI and although they will likely send out a fix, we do not expect to see until 1 month's time. Because you know, this is ATI.

Same advice about updating nVidia drivers apply. Happy crunching Boincers! :D
7) Message boards : Questions and problems : GPU stalling (Message 33736)
Posted 11 Jul 2010 by Kevin Feathers
Post:
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
# of GPUs: 2x GPU running in XFire
GPU Driver: Catalyst 10.5
GPU Model: 2x ATI HD5870
System RAM: 6GB 1800MHz Patriot
GPU RAM: 1024MB x 2

I have this issue also where not only do the GPU's appear to stop working, but the system becomes unresponsive however I believe the CPU is still crunching away becayse the HDD light is flashing like it does normally when only BOINC Projects are active in Task Manager.

The problem was far worse when Rosetta was active, I have no had to stop any more work units coming through and stability has increased markedly, but the GPU turning off still happens now and then which is a shame, because Eisntein ends up with computation errors if I have to cut the power.

It might be an idea to list the projects people are working on and the staus of those projects in regards to if they are active or not. I will list mine now:


ABC@Home: Won't get new tasks
rosetta@Home: Won't get new tasks
Collatz Conjecture
climateprediction.net: Won't get new tasks
DNETC@Home
Einstein@Home
lhc@Home
Milkyway@Home
orbit@Home
SETI@Home
Cosmology@Home
Enigma@Home
uFluids@Home: Won't get new tasks

Tell me how to get the logs, and I will email them to you as I have the ATI cards and I have the very same issue as you mate.




Copyright © 2024 University of California.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.