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| 1) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 32092 Posted 11 Apr 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Hi Standard, Kinhull, Sorry I missed your reply earlier. As a total non-topical aside, I have a horse named Kin :o) I appreciate the well-wishes, and also the support on the relevance of our problem/this topic to the BOINC-wide forum here as well as on my posting style - see, I know that many people here are more math- than verbal-oriented, or consider themselves too busy to read more than a couple of sentences, preferably shortened with military-style abbreviations if at all possible to keep the character count to a bare minimum and the cerebral investment at a low level. It's good to know that I can expound a little bit without being universally deplored and publicly dressed down for excess verbosity. Sure, I realise there is a time for quick and brief responses (which I do accordingly), but there are also times when I can and should be free to post something of moderate length and converse a little bit with friendly people while conveying some information at the same time. I don't think a 3-minute read is too much, especially when I'm responding to a few posts at once and trying to explain a complex situation without leaving out what might be an important detail. Hopefully those who don't have the inclination or time to read the post will come back to it when they do. A request for help is a request for help. A follow-up request should be honoured as well. I will make it clear when I need help, when I'm giving a status update and saying 'hi' to new friends, when it's a mixture, and above all, I believe I belong here just as much as anyone else does. What texting and email (wonderful and powerful tools, but with which it's very easy to entrap people in linguistic purgatory) has done to the English language is deplorable. I'll keep it brief here, because whole books have been written on the topic, but between the social conditioning that texting has imbued in the population and the contant barrage of information that some people can filter better than others, we've kind of devolved as a species for the first time when it comes to language. One rule of the brain is "use it or lose it", and many have begun to lose the neural pathways built over eons of evolution. Immersing yourself in short posts is like...like...are you old enough to remember those anti-drug commercials in the 80s, with the fried egg? :o) Soon you become addicted to those short bursts of incomplete information and are overwhelmed by even normal words, let alone those which may contain any hint of nuance or anything but base utilitarian thought transmission. Only 'professionals' are supposed to engage in such practices, and even then within acceptable limits and usually confined to the audience of other 'professionals'. But alas, again I digress... No, I don't think it's just you, though you do stand out in your brave admission of preferring comprehensiveness. The other extreme would be people who post and say they're having a problem, but don't elucidate it well enough for anyone to solve or are unable to find the words or time to express the problem, and this creates a burst of post exchanges which in aggregate wind up being longer than if the OP had just written enough information in the first place. That's one of my pet peeves, so I guess there's people on both sides, and there's a happy medium in there somewhere, so by conceding that I can sometimes go overboard, I'll try to aim for that median territory to keep everyone happy. It's the weekend now, so I imagine things will slow down a bit, and I'll be wrapped up with my personal/family/health issue for hours at a time, but I will wait another day or so and then send another brief request for foundership transfer if OBC is still locked out, and at the same time will begin the campaign at LHC and Einstein, at which nothing has been done because those projects deferred to SETI, forwarded me here to the BOINC forums, and are awaiting the resolution to the problem. Interestingly, the project managers also pointed out possible improvements in the BOINC software. I'll have to find which project, perhaps it is Rosetta, but one of them disabled team foundership transfer requests altogether, giving a message such as 'sorry, but this feature has been disabled due to abuse; please email project admin with any requests and your request will be evaluated'. Therefore, I'm apparently not the only one who's noticed that there's a problem and it's probably bigger than the RDFRS team, and it's a BOINC-wide problem because the software attempted to address it in earlier versions, but the method used by the RDFRS hacker is at least one workaround to the developer's coding. I commend them for making an attempt, and hope they follow through in the next version by closing any possible loopholes by making it harder to simply kick off members and rename a team, then quit that team so it has 0 members and is unreportable and thus invisible to the stats sites, relegated to obscurity on a given project's database under a gibberish name. As someone stated earlier in this thread, why would you need to ever kick anyone off of a team - what, are there production/crunching quotas now? :) I guess that would be one suggestion--to close off the ability to kick people off the team, though that seems like a drastic measure, and I know the developers here are much more skilled and creative and can come up with a way to stop this vandalism without punishing legitimate team founders from having near-complete freedom over their team. It's just that when you get into the hundreds of members and millions of credits, it changes the rules just a bit; that's more than just a small group of homies coming together and crunching (sorry, just heard that MC Frontalot's supposedly coming out with some fresh nerdcore, lol..and no, that's a self-conscious lol, not an 'I think I'm funny' lol). Hopefully the forum realises the tongue-in-cheek nature of the post, and that I don't respond to criticism with ad-hom attacks or being driven into a rage, I just stay cool, do what I do, and continue to transmit updates as they occur. Right now I'm in a holding pattern, waiting for action, with the following as the current status: 1) My whole team, as well as the individual team founder, is waiting for the answer as to how to facilitate team foundership transfer to me from OBC in SETI (without waiting till June-something-teenth for a non-existent founder to not respond), 2) we're waiting for SETI to act because the other projects are waiting to see how SETI reacts to fix this, and 3) we're waiting on an acknowledgement that this is a cross-project, BOINCwide problem and whether there's a way to fix it, because as you can see, rather than acknowledging that yes, there's a back door left wide open for vandals/saboteurs/malcontents/hackers, it's being made out to be a local team issue when it goes beyond that. Thanks for the support, and I appreciate everyone who's come out and acknowledged publicly as well as via PM. All the best to all creatures great and small, and blessed be the broodmares, StandardbredHorse |
| 2) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 32091 Posted 10 Apr 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
In a way, I do agree with Les, you do tend to ramble. But on the other hand I have been following this thread with interest. I hope you are able to get this problem solved not only for your own team but to keep it from happening to others. Thanks for your opinion, perryjay, and to an extent, I can agree. Keep in mind, however, that I have been suffering from extreme sleep deprivation due to my dragged-out family emergency, with the hospital stay now going over a week. Not to make excuses, because I am always pretty wordy, but normally am a little more succinct or at least on-point and sharp. I can't really change my "comprehensive and nuanced" style, though. Sometimes the cause of communication problems is incompleteness of a conveyed thought, though there is a fine line between 1) being thorough and arguing a point from many angles, even if lengthy, and 2) simply restating yourself with no new information (although restating/repeating can serve a purpose when you are trying to hammer a point home that is either not getting through or has gone unacknowledged. With all sincerity, I appreciate your post and thoughtful comment (I like that you made it without dripping sarcasm and insincerity), will try to be careful while still maintaining my style and being 'real', and appreciate not only your interest from a sympathetic point of view but also for recognising that this can and will happen again and it could be any team next. FYI re: the latest update, I've been AWOL for a day or two from here; my last email to dev/David was 2 days ago, however, and I was given explicit permission to assume foundership of the original team in an email CC'd to all by the founder stating that he 1) still cannot log into the account although still listed as founder (am assuming the hacker changed the orig PW); he needs to do that in order to be able to approve the foundership transfer to me, and 2) he is very sorry for the initial problem but did not protect his PW very carefully and that's what allowed the hacker to gain access and do such thorough damage, which until David intervened was unreversible, and unless one more step of intervention is taken, will leave our team unrecoverable until early June (assuming that the hacker has not left themsel(ves) a back door to prevent restoration). That's the latest...I'm hoping to email and get the foundership transfer done manually by SETI admin/personnel because that's how we prevented problems at Rosetta and thwarted the same hacker before he finished screwing up that project. Take care for now, StandardbredHorse |
| 3) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 32023 Posted 7 Apr 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Gotcha Les, and thanks. I prefer "nuanced and comprehensive" to "verbose" (we'll leave "constant" aside for a moment, as I hope that wasn't meant as a sideswipe; however, to address that briefly, each post has pertinent information w/updates, new info, etc.), but you made your point ;) Different people have different communication/writing styles, as do men and women, etc. etc., so I don't believe it to be a fault of mine, just a personal style. Thanks for the feed bag, though--I'll see what I can do to conform my message to its audience. I realise this is not the SETI site, but since 1) I believed, and in many respects still believe, there to be a problem re: BOINC software and its susceptibility to this form of hacking, I'd like there to be a change made to the software and/or protocol as necessary re: teams, foundership, and stats that could be implemented across projects from a central point vs. making 50 different requests at each project, and thus consider this an appropriate forum in which to make my case/request, and 2) this is/was a cross-project problem so rather than making my "constant verbose" posts in each forum, I had hoped to get it all done here--"one stop shopping", if you will--and I understand there are people here that can make that happen. I'll keep it brief and end here, but essentially that's why. Thanks, StandardbredHorse |
| 4) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 32004 Posted 7 Apr 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
*whinnies and hears his own voice echo back to his pricked ears* I feel like I'm nickering to myself here. As an update: I was able to join team "ASET" and have contacted OBC; awaiting response. My communiques are a bit delayed due to *still* having a loved one in the hospital, but I'm working diligently on this every day even a bit at a time (10-20 mins or so). I requested foundership and let OBC know if he's able to log in to please transfer that to me--he's uninterested in being founder 1) due to the hullaballoo and 2) has shifted priorities from BOINC and into a new venture, among other reasons. So...I don't wanna have to wait until June 5th. If someone here could make me founder, I will fix the team by renaming, as that is within the power right now. On my team's forum, I have been given explicit public permission to assume the role (by OBC). I don't know who has fingers in Einstein's and LHC pies, but I'll need help there too. I don't run either program and am not a member. A RDFRS member named "Stuart" (a trusted member and founder of a number of our projeects) is in charge of the new team there, I believe (going off memory) but the same issue applies with the old team ID and the new one needing a merge. Thanks to anyone/everyone who can provide help and/or guidance from this point forward. Who do I need to contact at 1) SETI to make me admin if OBC can't, 2) Einstein and LHC to merge Team IDs. Thanks again, Standardbred Horse |
| 5) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31974 Posted 6 Apr 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Sh*t. Of course my edit button disappears 5 mins after David resets the thing and notifies me via email. There's still work to be done and questions to be answered. What about Einstein and LHC? How do we integrate the two team IDs to avoid name conflicts? My apologies for any comments made out of frustration at what seemed like noncommital responses. We'll see how far this gets overnight and what the response is like via our board. OBC is cooperative and I'm waiting for an answer on whether I can get foundership so as to take the lead in renaming and getting the orig team back on track, all 15m credits. Still named "ASET", but will figure out what to do tomorrow. Thanks to all, I gotta go do my hospital duty. Been stressing, a VIP to me is in some cancer situation and...OK it's my spouse. So...it is what it is. Will whinny back at ya tomorrow. S. Horse |
| 6) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31973 Posted 6 Apr 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
I've received a lot of PMs, so I know many of you are watching with keen interest from the sidelines, waiting to see how all this will play out. If possible, could some of you kindly lend your public opinions and support, if not for my team then on behalf of your team in terms of what will happen when it becomes open season on teams via the hijack squads? Many of you are rightly proud of your contributions, and do it for the science first and foremost, but also are keenly aware of statistics compilations and where your team stands in them, down to being able to quote your exact position in BoincStats or your favourite site. I have been PM'd by some top-rank teams expressing concern and support, which I have greatly appreciated, and I'd also appreciate it if some of you stood by me/my team publicly here in the forum if you feel supportive. If you feel antipathy towards my pursuit, by all means, let's have a discussion here. If you support me, my team, and our plight, then let's send an audible message that as a community we will not stand idly by while these hackers make a mockery of our friendly numerical sport. What's happening to RDRFS is a travesty; we've been slowly but exponentially building since 2005, and I know that many of your teams are doing well too. Can you imagine waking up one day or checking in to see whether you've passed that team you've been waiting months to pass and finding out that your one token reward system that represents your donated unused CPU cycles, your team pride, your milestones, and all your (admittedly non-monetary and consumable) plaudits disappeared overnight in one fell swoop? I'd like to hear some further opinions. Thank you to all those who've already expressed support, and also help (i.e., Ageless in detective work despite antipathy towards the credit system overall), but I'd like to build a consensus here, and now is the time. If it were any of your teams, even if I were deadlocked in a #1 vs. #2 race with you, I'd express my support, as any sense of 'competition' would be cheapened and my team's lead, if gained by subterfuge (whether caused by my team or by an outside force such as a hacker, saboteur, lone wolf, disgruntled, 'gone postal' member, etc.) would be hollow and meaningless. Yeah, I know, melodramatic, but y'know what? This is more than just 'crunching' and I know that, judging from the team names, traffic to the stats websites, and posts from individual team forums regarding things like 'project of the month' and such things that there is a lot of pride in yourselves for amassing cobblestone credits. Won't you help a fellow team out who's been sabotaged by lending a word of support and perhaps some guidance to me in terms of how to best approach David's somewhat icy and terse responses? As if I didn't know how credits work. Big up to you, David, for your work and dedication to scientific endeavours, but I don't like being placated, pandered to, and my detailed and impassioned pleas dismissed out-of-hand with inadequate, half-hearted, brusque responses--personality and communication style aside. What do you really think? Did you hear what I said? You don't have to write a bunch, but man, can ya crack that noggin just a little? I'm not going to pussyfoot around an issue just because you've done great things in your time. No offense intended, but man...show a little love for your volunteers, without whom your little project would remain just that. I know you get flustered by what seems like a distraction, but since the days of the little green antenna in the systray, stats have played an integral role in quantifying our relative contributions, and whether you like it or not (unless some dictatorial decree is passed down) it will remain that way. I did not spend all this time and effort for three sentences telling me I'm SOL or tell OBC to rejoin the team and manually add it back in. Let's say he did do it--ya think he's really going to undo it? But since he didn't, give me answers, don't restate the problem for me--I know what the problem is. I need solutions. Any support, solutions, creativity, rah-rah, debate, criticism, whatever is preferred to silence and dismissal. We want redress, we've done our investigation, and it's time for action that's beyond our means but perhaps within your scope. If you can't do it, fine. If you can, as I said, you have all our team and our resources and collective knowledge at your disposal. I leave it at that for tonight, I'm about to go graze and chill with the studz, marez, and geldofs. Peace to all...David, Ageless, everyone on the forum...have a fantastic evening, here's to whinnying at ya on the morrow. Standardbred Horse |
| 7) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31964 Posted 5 Apr 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 12:35 PM, Thom Yorke/RABN Horse <xxxstallionsrhott@gmail.com> wrote: Thanks for your prompt response, David. I appreciate the quick rundown of the stats programs, with which I've become familiarised, and I've been informed by the admins at BOINC that it is supposed to work how you say. However, OBC is stating that he cannot rejoin the team(s) and is locked out of his account. Furthermore, he states that he did not remove any, let alone all 700+ members of the team, one by one, until there were none left. In addition, I tried using this same method, with permission from my team, via PrimeGrid, and the software prevented me from doing so. I also tried the same at Collatz Conjecture and failed to reproduce the results of the sabotage. Therefore, this represents a weakness in the system that is easily exploited via a backdoor method around the security features that you and others designed. In this case, the backdoor method of which I am speaking, and which any potential saboteur can currently use on SETI and some other projects, is stealthily or brute-forcing his/her way to foundership, Rosetta has disabled this feature, as have many other projects. Back to the point(s): Once the saboteur has assumed foundership using tactical force, he removes credits by zeroing out the team members and then quitting the team so that the team is 'ghosted', and thereby the team is not reflected in the stats uploads the next time they are exported. As you may or may not see, "ASET", which is what the hacker renamed our team, is not reflected in any stats sites even though it has 15m plus credits. Cleverly, (s)he locked OBC out of the group and thus OBC, the true and original founder, is incapable of rejoining the team and undoing the damage via the method you described, even though he is willing to do so if given the opportunity, or if any of our team members are given the opportunity. So here's how it was hacked, using your template (highlighting the weakness which you had tried to prevent using other parts of the BOINC program): -hacker gains access to team foundership utilising whatever means (s)he used and removes all members of team - hacker was unable to delete team since it had credits (15,000,000) -hacker secreted the credits so that they were unreportable and exist in a ghosted part of SETI's database -hacker changed the team's name, quit the team, and left a skeleton whereby the real founder cannot now rejoin since the team is "not accepting new members" - (s)he made sure to check that box to complete the job on the way out. -OBC cannot rejoin the team, since it has 0 members and is not accepting new members, so it is stuck in limbo and needs to be unstuck to allow new members. Clearly this is a case of sabotage, and will only encourage saboteurs if left in its current state. I cannot imagine that this is acceptable to you, nor is it what you want, nor is it what was envisioned by the founders of BOINC when coming up with a way to reward and encourage participation and volunteerism. I hope you are not telling me that this is repeatable behaviour which is going to be encouraged further by inaction. I only wish it were as simple as OBC rejoining the team, as he is willing to do so, but is prevented from rejoining. He pledges full cooperation if given the opportunity, and is also willing to delegate that responsibility to me or any other reputable member of our team. Please keep in mind, though we're not trying to throw our 'weight' around, that we are amongst the top teams. It is quite dispiriting and against all form of fair play and sportsmanship for this to happen to a high-profile team via an attack which is most likely politically or religiously motivated. Statistical terrorism is both unsportsmanlike behaviour as well as unscientific, and should not be ignored in this case, or it will encourage further sabotage and hacking. If I were the unethical type, I could probably reproduce this method, rename a top-ranked team to RDFRS, steal the credits of L'Alliance Francophone or some other top-ranked team, and be done with my problem and pass it along to someone else. Sure it would cause an uproar, but it wouldn't be my problem. Is this how we want things to progress? I understand the way you've explained it, but the crux of my question is not the past, but what can we do about it now that the damage is done? OBC cannot rejoin, and thus the solution is not simple in this case. We only want what we've earned--nothing more, nothing less. I realise that many would not care if the whole system of credits disappeared tomorrow, but I respectfully and forcefully disagree, as time and time again this element of competitiveness, when not taken to extremes, leads to higher levels of participation and thus more volunteerism, more contribution to scientifically worthy causes, and is basically the only way for volunteers to earn a token of appreciation for their work. Hopefully this is not too much to ask. If it can happen to our team, it can happen to any team, and that renders the whole competition meaningless, does it not? I believe it would be in our best interest, both from volunteers' perspective as well as that of BOINC and project managers, that our situation be rectified, publicly. Otherwise, this will only encourage the mean-spirited, opportunistic, unscientific, unsportsmanlike, and obscene to follow the new recipe which has been introduced to wreak havoc. You've clearly improved the software from previous versions and tried to install failsafes, and clearly this is a new method of attack. Are you capable of closing this security breach, or are we all to crunch with the possibility that the team we've worked to develop over years could be wiped out in a single day with a single act of destruction by an unethical hacker? Should SETI.USA, L'AF, and other top teams be looking over their shoulder? I know I'm a lone voice here, but I guarantee that if it happened to one of those teams the level of discussion may not be as calm or reasoned. Please help us, and demonstrate to the community that security breaches to BOINC software are something which you will not tolerate. Respectfully yours, StandardbredHorse On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 11:31 AM, David Anderson <davexxx@kingothemountaindotcom> wrote: here's how things work: - a team founder can remove any or all members of a team. - a team founder can delete the team if it has no members - no credit is every removed from a team - a team founder can administer a team (e.g. change its name) only if they are a member of it. In this case, OBC can rejoin the team, rename it, and then all the members can rejoin it was well. -- David Thom Yorke/RABN Horse wrote: Hello David, I have heard many good things about you as the progenitor, or one of the progenitors of the BOINC project as a whole, a contributor to SETI and perhaps other projects, and as a 'guru' of sorts when it comes to BOINC. I hope you can help me with my problem. Brevity is not my strong point, so I will give it a go, as I understand you like things to be brief--it's a complex problem, and hopefully a simple solution. I believe you have been briefed by Ageless, a forum moderator at the BOINC forums, so you may already have a basic understanding of the situation. A family member of mine was in the hospital for weeks, so as my team's appointed leader, I have failed in getting the task accomplished quickly, but I'd like to finish now if I can. I need some good news. Recently, there has been some inappropriate behaviour and unintended use of the team functionality regarding stats compilation and database manipulation by who we believe to be a hacker. This was in regards to the statistics compilation for RDFRS, or the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science--a team which we have built from the ground up since 2005, one cobblestone at a time, exponentially building to be a populist powerhouse, 750 members strong and among the top teams overall and on each individual BOINC project. Ageless has taken the time to research original Team IDs in the SETI project as well as to follow our team's message board, and this issue unfortunately affects the SETI. Einstein and LHC projects. Through quick action by both myself and project admins, Rosetta and other projects were able to avert the vandalism before it occurred and/or before the databases updated and uploaded to the stats sites. We had a diverse group of founders, so it is just these several projects that have been affected. In the software, you have tried to prevent vandalism and sabotage by writing in code which prevents a team founder from kicking active members off of a team which has accumulated credit. Unfortunately, someone has found a way to circumvent the protection you built in via a backdoor method which has now been published on the BOINC forums and is ready to be used again by the next saboteur. I fear not only for the statistical compilation, which provides motivation for many a cruncher, but also for the possible integrity of the databases for each individual project. A wave of vandalism, sabotage and subterfuge awaits inaction by BOINC. To resummarise briefly, someone, on 2 separate occasions, used their power (whether legitimately or illegitimately obtained) as team "founder" to deactivate/kick off members of our team who had accumulated credit--a supposedly impossible feat. The saboteur removed team members one by one, then renamed the team to a gibberish name, leaving a multimillion (approx. 15,000,000 credits/cobblestones) team in shambles creditwise. On or around 27-Apr-2010 (though probably done on 25-Apr, as SETI's db was down for maintenance), here is the result from SETI, with our original Team ID: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=129421 .This happened with the same saboteur at Einstein@home <mailto:Einstein@home> on or around 25-Apr 2010. Over 10,000,000 credits were lost on that occasion. The same happened at project LHC@home <mailto:LHC@home> at about the same time. In all three cases, the same saboteur was at fault and used the same method: removing all team members, both active and past, leaving the founder as the only team member and then renaming the team (with millions of credits, since they could not delete the team) to a nonsensical name, thus circumventing the protective coding you and others built into the BOINC software. This backdoor method has now been published for all to see at the BOINC forum at a thread which I believe you briefly visited: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=5493 Temporarily, we (Ageless, other forum mods, my team and myself) believe this can be fixed by merging the old team ID with new ones that were created by RDFRS team members who were anxious to restart the team in some form, even if it was from 'scratch', i.e., 0 credits. I would like to exercise this option if possible. However, on a permanent basis, I'd also like to prevent it from occurring to my or any other team. In the spirit of fair play and friendly competition representing and quantifying scientific advancement in the form of token representation of our individual and collective contribution, which I believe to be the foundation of the cobblestone system, we'd like to see the system be preserved as intended and such a situation be prevented in the future by preventing a team from being renamed without the consensus of a group in question, i.e., not unilaterally and with deleterious motives, and particularly for such a large and productive group. In all cases, the saboteur took the pseudonym "Obscured By Clouds". If you are interested, I can include chat transcripts where the actual member named OBC (a legitimate and respected member of our forum who is willing to cooperate in any way possible) denies purposeful subterfuge and claims innocence, stating it must have been a hacker. I can provide links to our team's forum, as can Ageless, who is very familiar with our plight. Nobody on our team is aware of any reason why this may have occurred despite rigorous and thorough questioning of all team founders. We believe it to be the work of a malicious hacker who somehow gained access to the database to undermine a team based on a political or religious reason. The integrity of a database is almost holy in the world of science, and if a hacker has gained access to the stats database, who is to say that (s)he has not gained access to other areas? We would like our credits reinstated. We are one of the top 100 teams, and in some projects one of the top 10 teams, and we consistently rank under #100 in many projects. Please note the dates in question in graph form at: http://boincstats.com/stats/boinc_team_graph.php?pr=bo&id=133060 <http://boincstats.com/stats/boinc_team_graph.php?pr=bo&id=133060> where we plummeted from over 73 million total credits to just over 50 million in less than 2 days. We understand a similar situation happened to SETI.USA and was resolved, and we would like to get our situation resolved similarly. Please reinstate our credits and merge our teams using the team IDs which have already been determined through detective work on the respective forum(s). If you need any further supporting evidence that this was not an 'inside job', a purposeful renaming, or any other information that may assist you in investigating and rectifying the problem, please feel free to email me and/or work with the forum mods who are familiar with our case. We have full stats, chat transcripts with OBC including PMs to OBC as founder, and all other supporting evidence. You have our entire team of over 750 members (currently 550 due to ~200 members still unaware they are not crunching for RDFRS as well as retirees) at your disposal, with me as spokesperson and BOINC mods and developers from SETI and other projects also at your service. While we do not want to take an inordinate amount of time away from your important scientific work, we believe this issue to be relevant enough *to* the furtherment of said scientific work that you'll perhaps be willing to invest the relatively small time by giving your go-ahead and any expertise you have in 1) reinstating our team and 2) preventing the situation from happening again via small changes to the software (having already been made by certain project admins), action(s) without which could unfortunately perhaps unleash a flood of complaints and pandemonium from other teams affected; it takes only several weeks once published for saboteurs to gain an advantage on developers now that the backdoor stats undermining method is published. Please help to preempt by showing that BOINC and its projects will not tolerate such behaviour from anyone and is being proactive in preventing such vandalous acts, and please help to maintain the fun competitive spirit of the stats comps. I thank you for any help you can give. Again, my apologies, but a personal emergency kept me from following up more immediately. However, Ageless and a small group of BOINC/SETI devs has already done much of the work in determining what it may take to reinstate us. They just need the go-ahead from you to initiate action. I beg of you to please rectify this situation not only for RDFRS, but for the health of the BOINC system overall. Again, any information you could possibly need is only an email or forum post away. I and my team anxiously await your response. Thanks and best regards, Mic Morose, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science |
| 8) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31960 Posted 5 Apr 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Thanks for the tip, Ageless...I'll be careful to get those edits in as needed. I'm a big self-editor, so often a stream-of-consciousness can be diverted by rocks of brevity. Appreciate it. Standardbred Horse |
| 9) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31954 Posted 5 Apr 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Whoa...my edit button disappeared in just a few hours. I'd meant to clarify that in my chats to OBC, (s)he said that (s)he could no longer log in to the team or team founder's account at SETI because (s)he was no longer a team member either. I'm inclined to believe that, since it does show OBC as founder, but the number of team members says '0' and OBC is not getting credit for crunching SETI according to BoincStats (or at least wasn't that day I checked). So...we have a team that exists, 'ASET' is not reporting to BoincStats with 15,000,000 credits because it has 0 members, so the credits are effectively buried and OBC, even as team founder, is locked out of the account. In some respects, it looks like the 'perfect crime' has been committed. Once again, I looked for the ASET team to take the defunct/modded/hacked RDFRS team's place in the stats, and it didn't because of the 0 members thing. Therefore, the 15m credits are in limbo, statistically speaking. Deviously brilliant in a disgustingly unsportscreaturelike way. So it seems that, if there's a way (and a will?) the way forward would be to merge the existing members back in to the original team once an admin or someone with the appropriate privilege levels goes in and renames the team from 'ASET' back to RDFRS. Am I naive to think it's that simple? If they cannot be manually merged, I have already asked most (not all, that's kind of impossible) of the team members if they'd mind being kicked off the new team in order to rejoin the old team, and so if that same person w/admin privileges were to kick off the members of the new RDRFS team and each member had to rejoin, we'd retain the 15m credits and only lose the several thousand that have accumulated since the incident happened (though ideally we wouldn't have to lose any contributions). Also, the team name with "official" in it could be done away with, since the 'official' team is the only team with the original name. I've already spoken with those who started the 'official' team and their intent was to recreate the original, since at the time they had gotten some message like "there is already a team with this name, please choose again'...there must've been a lag time in between when the team members were kicked out (it must have taken a while to kick several hundred members off a team manually) and when the team was renamed, and those 2-3 members happened to be online and returning results at that time (which is not unusual given the international/global nature of our team). So...there's the deal: 3 teams: 1 original (15m), 1 recreated identically named team with different ID, and 1 almost-identical team with 'official' in the name, all needing a merge and hopefully with an eye towards preserving all old and new credits and members as much as possible. I know it's work for someone, I don't know what the currency of such a menial task would be other than its own reward in the name of science and volunteerism, or if we could somehow between us come up with a trade or reward for the person who does it, but there's the issue laid out as plainly as I can, with reasoning, choices, and basically everything but procedural protocol of which I know nothing. I've pretty much got a team consensus, which is amazing given the team's relative size (and by consensus, I mean virtually unanimous, with the only exemptions being 1) people wanting a new, less conspicuous cross-project name so that we're not a target, and 2) people who are unsure that they want to join the new team again given the fiasco due to losing credits in the meantime, which I think is a shame...actually I think both 1 and 2 are a shame). We are talking about doing a coordinated, purposeful name change after all of this so that the Dawkins name isn't such a target for hackers. For example, as stated earlier, the first drop in stats put the team exactly one spot below "Christians", and the second put it right by "Stormfront Nationalist White Community". Coincidence? Hmm...I can do more than just count with my hooves. The only thing missing is motive, and the only thing we can come up with is hacking. There was some acrimony when the message boards were being retooled, but the compromise was soon ironed out to everyone's satisfaction when 'rationalskepticism.org' was used as a temporary board site for all to remain in contact until the RDFRS boards were finished restructuring. An internal attack would have had to come from a team founder, who not only vigorously denies it, but is offering to be cc'd on the letter to David (which I forgot to do) and cooperate to the fullest extent possible with us. So...I'd say this is clear-cut. Obscured By Clouds name is cleared IMO, and (s)he is willing to cooperate in any way possible. Thanks to anyone who summarises my posts. I can be bad with the stream-of-consciousness. I just forgot to add a few things to David's letter that are probably of importance, namely OBL's willingness to be brought in to the process as former team founder. Perhaps (s)he had an easy-to-guess password. Thanks also to any dev/volunteer/anyone willing to help. BTW, once it's all sorted out, all atheist/agnostics/rational skeptics are willing to join our BOINC endeavours, we maintain a presence on every BOINC project, and if we do a name-change, it will be seamlessly integrated, timed in a coordinated fashion, and transparent to the individual team member. *friendly departing whinny* StandardbredHorse |
| 10) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31953 Posted 5 Apr 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Gimme that damn beer (j/k). Men, and women, stallions and mares (and geldings)I am so sorry for the prolonged absence, but a family member of mine with cancer suddenly collapsed and required my presence at shifts in the hospital, and I have been one beleaguered equine lately. This had fallen by the wayside. I think it's pretty clear in my chats to OBC that (s)he is willing to help in any way possible, but states that (s)he cannot even get in to re-rename the team, since (s)he is no longer a member even though listed as founder (i.e., see the "Aset" team with 0 members). I am inclined to believe OBC at this point, and believe it has been ascertained that this was clear sabotage and either it is unadmitted or definitely hacked. I've put forth my best investigational effort and found no evidence of foul play amongst any of our team founders even after rigorous questioning that threatened to tear our team apart at the seams due to mistrust. I don't know how much close we could've taken it to the brink without out-and-out accusations. I believe OBC. Thus, after my extended emergency absence (please note that I may have other days here and there when unavailable due to follow-up emergency care), I have fired off the below email to David and CC'd you, Ageless. I hope this is enough, not too much, but it's the best and briefest summary I know how to give as a social sciences major with a perfect verbal ACT and SAT score: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Thom Yorke/RABN Horse <xxxxbigstallionsruleandsodoesradiohead@gmail.com> Date: Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 1:18 AM Subject: BOINC software/database problem regarding sabotage, teams, inappropriate behaviour To: davexxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxx.xxx Cc: xxxAgelessxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx Hello David, I have heard many good things about you as the progenitor, or one of the progenitors of the BOINC project as a whole, a contributor to SETI and perhaps other projects, and as a 'guru' of sorts when it comes to BOINC. I hope you can help me with my problem. Brevity is not my strong point, so I will give it a go, as I understand you like things to be brief--it's a complex problem, and hopefully a simple solution. I believe you have been briefed by Ageless, a forum moderator at the BOINC forums, so you may already have a basic understanding of the situation. A family member of mine was in the hospital for weeks, so as my team's appointed leader, I have failed in getting the task accomplished quickly, but I'd like to finish now if I can. I need some good news. Recently, there has been some inappropriate behaviour and unintended use of the team functionality regarding stats compilation and database manipulation by who we believe to be a hacker. This was in regards to the statistics compilation for RDFRS, or the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science--a team which we have built from the ground up since 2005, one cobblestone at a time, exponentially building to be a populist powerhouse, 750 members strong and among the top teams overall and on each individual BOINC project. Ageless has taken the time to research original Team IDs in the SETI project as well as to follow our team's message board, and this issue unfortunately affects the SETI. Einstein and LHC projects. Through quick action by both myself and project admins, Rosetta and other projects were able to avert the vandalism before it occurred and/or before the databases updated and uploaded to the stats sites. We had a diverse group of founders, so it is just these several projects that have been affected. In the software, you have tried to prevent vandalism and sabotage by writing in code which prevents a team founder from kicking active members off of a team which has accumulated credit. Unfortunately, someone has found a way to circumvent the protection you built in via a backdoor method which has now been published on the BOINC forums and is ready to be used again by the next saboteur. I fear not only for the statistical compilation, which provides motivation for many a cruncher, but also for the possible integrity of the databases for each individual project. A wave of vandalism, sabotage and subterfuge awaits inaction by BOINC. To resummarise briefly, someone, on 2 separate occasions, used their power (whether legitimately or illegitimately obtained) as team "founder" to deactivate/kick off members of our team who had accumulated credit--a supposedly impossible feat. The saboteur removed team members one by one, then renamed the team to a gibberish name, leaving a multimillion (approx. 15,000,000 credits/cobblestones) team in shambles creditwise. On or around 27-Apr-2010 (though probably done on 25-Apr, as SETI's db was down for maintenance), here is the result from SETI, with our original Team ID: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/team_display.php?teamid=129421.This happened with the same saboteur at Einstein@home on or around 25-Apr 2010. Over 10,000,000 credits were lost on that occasion. The same happened at project LHC@home at about the same time. In all three cases, the same saboteur was at fault and used the same method: removing all team members, both active and past, leaving the founder as the only team member and then renaming the team (with millions of credits, since they could not delete the team) to a nonsensical name, thus circumventing the protective coding you and others built into the BOINC software. This backdoor method has now been published for all to see at the BOINC forum at a thread which I believe you briefly visited:http://boinc.berkeley.edu/dev/forum_thread.php?id=5493 Temporarily, we (Ageless, other forum mods, my team and myself) believe this can be fixed by merging the old team ID with new ones that were created by RDFRS team members who were anxious to restart the team in some form, even if it was from 'scratch', i.e., 0 credits. I would like to exercise this option if possible. However, on a permanent basis, I'd also like to prevent it from occurring to my or any other team. In the spirit of fair play and friendly competition representing and quantifying scientific advancement in the form of token representation of our individual and collective contribution, which I believe to be the foundation of the cobblestone system, we'd like to see the system be preserved as intended and such a situation be prevented in the future by preventing a team from being renamed without the consensus of a group in question, i.e., not unilaterally and with deleterious motives, and particularly for such a large and productive group. In all cases, the saboteur took the pseudonym "Obscured By Clouds". If you are interested, I can include chat transcripts where the actual member named OBC (a legitimate and respected member of our forum who is willing to cooperate in any way possible) denies purposeful subterfuge and claims innocence, stating it must have been a hacker. I can provide links to our team's forum, as can Ageless, who is very familiar with our plight. Nobody on our team is aware of any reason why this may have occurred despite rigorous and thorough questioning of all team founders. We believe it to be the work of a malicious hacker who somehow gained access to the database to undermine a team based on a political or religious reason. The integrity of a database is almost holy in the world of science, and if a hacker has gained access to the stats database, who is to say that (s)he has not gained access to other areas? We would like our credits reinstated. We are one of the top 100 teams, and in some projects one of the top 10 teams, and we consistently rank under #100 in many projects. Please note the dates in question in graph form at: http://boincstats.com/stats/boinc_team_graph.php?pr=bo&id=133060where we plummeted from over 73 million total credits to just over 50 million in less than 2 days. We understand a similar situation happened to SETI.USA and was resolved, and we would like to get our situation resolved similarly. Please reinstate our credits and merge our teams using the team IDs which have already been determined through detective work on the respective forum(s). If you need any further supporting evidence that this was not an 'inside job', a purposeful renaming, or any other information that may assist you in investigating and rectifying the problem, please feel free to email me and/or work with the forum mods who are familiar with our case. We have full stats, chat transcripts with OBC including PMs to OBC as founder, and all other supporting evidence. You have our entire team of over 750 members (currently 550 due to ~200 members still unaware they are not crunching for RDFRS as well as retirees) at your disposal, with me as spokesperson and BOINC mods and developers from SETI and other projects also at your service. While we do not want to take an inordinate amount of time away from your important scientific work, we believe this issue to be relevant enough *to* the furtherment of said scientific work that you'll perhaps be willing to invest the relatively small time by giving your go-ahead and any expertise you have in 1) reinstating our team and 2) preventing the situation from happening again via small changes to the software (having already been made by certain project admins), action(s) without which could unfortunately perhaps unleash a flood of complaints and pandemonium from other teams affected; it takes only several weeks once published for saboteurs to gain an advantage on developers now that the backdoor stats undermining method is published. Please help to preempt by showing that BOINC and its projects will not tolerate such behaviour from anyone and is being proactive in preventing such vandalous acts, and please help to maintain the fun competitive spirit of the stats comps. I thank you for any help you can give. Again, my apologies, but a personal emergency kept me from following up more immediately. However, Ageless and a small group of BOINC/SETI devs has already done much of the work in determining what it may take to reinstate us. They just need the go-ahead from you to initiate action. I beg of you to please rectify this situation not only for RDFRS, but for the health of the BOINC system overall. Again, any information you could possibly need is only an email or forum post away. I and my team anxiously await your response. Thanks and best regards, Mic Morose, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science ***************************************************************** I hope this is OK. A bit longer than I'd liked, but maybe some edits by the forum could help (if you can preserve the unique ideas and nuance). Thanks all for the attention after a couple weeks of inactivity. Lemme know what y'all think. StandardbredHorse *huge relieved nickers* |
| 11) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31399 Posted 7 Mar 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Just wanted to jump in here to wish you the best of luck getting this resolved. Hope everything turns out for the best for you and your teammates. Perryjay, browsing to this topic to check for updates and running across your message really made my morning - no hyperbole; I was kind of groggy and took a deep sigh and wondered exactly what I'd see, and there was your post. I wish there were more like yours. Thank you very much. I don't want to swing the mood negative, but in the meantime, if you are on a team, make sure to spread the word to your founders/admins, because as it stands now, anyone can get their team jacked via this backdoor method. I hope not only to get our team fixed, but hope it's a loophole that BOINC admin can get closed--even when/if we get our team back, we believe in the spirit of *fair* competition, and to see another team taken out in a similar way would be just as unacceptable to me--and it looks like it is to you as well. Again, thank you so much, and be careful! Take care for now, *friendly nickers and a gentle whuffle* StandardbredHorse |
| 12) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31395 Posted 7 Mar 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Hello again, and sorry for the delay in response. I had some personal issues arise which prevented me from either 1) commenting on the thread, or 2) following through via email contacts. I'm back this weekend, and although I know this is probably more of a Monday-Friday gig for the dev teams and to an extent the project managers, I'll prepare a short reminder regarding the problem. Upon cursory inspection, it appears our team is still not back, so I've got my work cut out for me in terms of utilising contacts in order to get this done. However, I have had a chance to connect with both OBC and the rest of the team in the brief time I've been back. OBC only responded back by providing me with a URL to his new site and offering me a chance to crunch for the new team he's setting up. That's basically the extent of the message I got, and perhaps 'cryptic' was the wrong adjective to use (aside from the fact that his motivation was not stated, thus still leaving it a mystery). He didn't address any of the issues I brought up (i.e., why'd you kick everyone off the team and rename it, and what do you plan to do next?--I kept it brief). He complimented me as a cruncher in terms of stats, and said I'd be welcome to join both a new forum and 'new BOINC teams that are forming'. None of the issues regarding the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science were addressed at all. I reconnected with my team at the redesigned forum, met with one of the other major project founders (Richard Prins), and there was a large thread with people confused and angry over being kicked off, assuming that it had been an official group decision. Noone had found out that sabotage was involved, since without knowing the team's ID, it is now impossible to find the original team prior to its re-creation from scratch--from a user's perspective, it just seemed to disappear. Many also assumed it was part of re-starting the forum, and many conspiracy theories abounded. Now that I've cleared up the mystery, the general consensus of 99% of those responding thus far is that they would like to be reinstated to the team and would like the credits back, so basically the consensus has not changed now that it's been a few days and more people are aware that suddenly they're not on a team. Therefore, I stated that I'd developed contacts at BOINC and at SETI and promised to work to reinstate the team and its credits ASAP. Many are waiting to rejoin until it's cleared up, fearing that newly acquired credits may be lost when the team IDs are merged, so most have decided to set SETI, Einstein, and LHC to NNT until it's cleared up (most are involved in other projects which were unaffected). I also contacted Rosetta@home's admin, and we managed to avert any vandalism there, since within about 10 minutes of me contacting him, he researched the issue a bit and replaced OBC as team founder, with myself as current temporary founder until one with a higher RAC decides to take the reins. Other than that, it's basically the same. I know it's contingent on me to send the necessary emails conveying the will of the team, but I do so even more confidently than before now that more team members have contributed their opinions. Many are concerned that Richard Dawkins as a political/social figure may attract these sort of attacks, so there is a small group that wants to simultaneously rename the entire team to something like 'rationalreasoning' or something, but that is a debate for another time, once the primary isssue is cleared up. Thanks for the continued attention, and I'll do my best to get cracking on the email and messaging front. Thanks again to Ageless, to anyone who's following this thread, and to fellow RDFRS teammates that are now monitoring this thread. Take care, all. Best regards, StandardbredHorse |
| 13) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31305 Posted 2 Mar 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Thanks, Ageless - PM responded to, and should now be in your inbox. In it, I thanked you, but also wanted to thank you publicly for your efforts not only in picking up this issue, but also for taking it seriously, and rapidly bringing it to the attention of the right people. We'll see what happens from here...hopefully some resolution can be reached. I've said it like 6 times now, but thanks for your efforts, and I'll take the info in the PM as instructed. Best regards, StandardbredHorse |
| 14) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31297 Posted 2 Mar 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
I stand by my position and to expand, if members quit a team and to, the team holds the credit for the period being member... if the member gets chucked, then the team looses the credit, but it does not transfer to a new team. After all, a member could get nasty too to the point of being disruptive beyond reason, i.e. wanting to get forced off. The excuse of dormant contributors being thrown off because of TRAC considerations I've never understood. Then RAC should be recomputed without that member. More reason to be very careful on the part of the founder. Bump, and thank you for the support, Sekerob. Prescient words, and they reinforce that even if you're careful re: the founder, this can still happen. Now we know the blueprint/means by which it can happen. Hopefully the loophole can/will be closed. I also have not understood the RAC considerations. I basically agree with yr post 100%. Very best regards, StandardbredHorse *nicker* |
| 15) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31296 Posted 2 Mar 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Now, this is normal BOINC code. The project may not have updated to this code yet, or the project administrator may have edited it to suit his own needs/wants. I know Rytis of Primegrid runs lots of his own code, he also used to keep up the BOINC forum code until he got too busy to be able to keep up with it. I appreciate you posting the code; I'm not familiar enough with BOINC-specific code to comment, but can see both the protection and the limitations of protection (i.e., a workaround for the saboteur) written within. PrimeGrid was one I tested, and rec'd this exact error message. Collatz was another; we only had 5 members at the time, so with everyone's permission I kicked them off; this kept the team's credit intact. However, I still could not delete the team because it was obviously still a non-empty team, including my own credit. The number of credits did not diminish as I kicked off each team member. I did not try quitting myself and trying to admin, since I assumed I'd lose my admin/founder rights and didn't want to leave that open at this critical time. So it appears that the only way around, which this 'obscured by clouds' seems to have done, is by 1) taking over foundership, 2) kicking off the hundreds of team members and 3) since (s)he was probably prevented by the software from deleting the team, (s)he just renamed it to the gibberish name it is now, and that did the trick. So that is how a determined saboteur can work around the software coding. Let's be careful now that that information's out in the open. Thank you for helping to reverse-engineer how it was done. Is there a way we can use this knowledge not only to keep vigilant against future attacks but somehow to prevent them? I never implied that, you've read something in my post I didn't say. I asked you to contact the team founder, ask him if he knows of this situation, if he had a hand in it, if he wants this situation and if not, that he contact us through here or through email (David's email address is easily found). I apologise if I implied that you proposed that as the only solution, but indirectly we/you and I know that OBC *is* the team founder, having somehow assumed team foundership (me, Stuart, and Richard Prins had been the only 3 founders [you can check this by surfing to each BOINC project page if you wish], to my knowledge, though there are so many projects it is possible OBC was the original without my knowledge); still that doesn't change the situation whether it's a longer-term or new founder. As directed, I've registered for the new forum (using the info you posted to help me locate it via OBC's account), found him/her in order to initiate contact, and am awaiting a PM. Now that there seems to be competing forums from a splinter group, and OBC's SETI account is advertising the competing forum, I'm assuming a disgruntled lone-wolf type response awaits me, if I get one. Are you saying now that if (s)he did that on purpose that his/her will overrides the will of hundreds that (s)he kicked off because foundership endowed OBC with the right to backdoor sabotage, or are you saying that if we contact OBC, they confirm that yeah, they damaged the team on purpose (which we now know via forensics that they did), we request it be restored by renaming it to its individual founder or a new one, that we can do that by contacting the appropriate personnel and presenting the evidence of mischief and 'founder' misconduct? I can't even request to take over foundership of the SETI team because now, OBC has fixed it so that no new members can join and I don't even know if (s)he is now even a member, so it's basically 'locked' for anyone but a 'higher power' to fix--that leaves our options as 1) appeal for help from you/SETI/David/BOINC, or 2) negotiate with OBC, the saboteur. There simply are no other options that I see. I don't fault you or any other developer for not foreseeing this type of situation in which a determined vandal could work around the way the code was written; after all, it's supposed to be 'friendly' competition, and as you said, each project is free to update/implement any new code at their discretion (though it appears that OBC had to take the actions the way (s)he did because the protections *were* indeed in place at SETI). At this point, I'm only asking for reasonable redress - the SETI forum redirected me here for help b/c they didn't understand what was going on, so assuming OBC wishes to leave the sabotage intact, what's the next step? Please don't get me wrong; I'm not directing anything at you or wishing to unwittingly wield my frustration and make a target of a kind person who's doing your best to help us. My only point is that there is still a 'death' switch built in to the software despite the built-in protection, and that trigger is the ability to kick off all members and then rename the team; this is possible even after a substantial amount of credit and members have accumulated and I can tell by the coding that the intent was to prevent this from happening. The renaming function wasn't designed to be used that way. I can assure you that the vast majority of RDFRS members do not want this situation (as evidenced by the 'kicking off' technique and the several hundred still on our team(s) as you can see via BOINCStats and other stat sites. The new forum can start their own team and we can duke it out in the name of science - very apropos. The renaming our team, leaving it unrecoverable and rendering it moot was a cheap shot and one which shouldn't have happened. Given the fact that it appears SETI adopted the aforementioned newer BOINC code, we now know that this can happen to any team. As an example, for our team, Richard Prins is on an extended leave; he's been the founder since 2005 or so. If he misses an email, anyone can take over as founder and now has a blueprint on how to destroy the 'competition'. It's better that the information is now out there; the question is how to prevent this in the future. What happened to Seti.USA happened on Milkyway. Their team was taken over in the early days of the team-founder change code. At the time, if the team founder had his preferences set not to receive email from the project, he would not get the email when someone challenged him to take over as team founder. So after 2 months the team would be the new guy's, to do with what he wanted. Including kick off all team members and be there with a million credit team, that he owned. Thank you - I think you're describing exactly what happened in our situation too, though instead it may be that our founder was away. Again, I don't know enough about the SETI team to know whether OBC was an original founder who got disgruntled or a new-guy type challenger as described above who went through the appropriate action to get control of the team if the founder wasn't careful to check and respond to all email. Keeping in mind that the team's several years old and the lifespan of some email addys these days, it's not out of the question that a hostile takeover may have occurred, especially given the vitriol you pointed out later in the post with the forum changes over at the RD.net page. As a final point of clarification, by saying the BOINC software had failed, I didn't mean that in its current state that its checks/balances had failed, only that it had allowed one person to get in and destroy a team via a method that may not have been thought of when the code was written. Ageless, thank you once again for your time and forensic investigation both here and obviously surfing other forums to uncover not only the means but a possible motive as well. Your assistance has been and is most appreciated. I just want to know what, if anything, I can do if OBC is recalcitrant, unrepentant, and obstinately refuses to reinstate the team name from gibberish to what it was before, because that's what I'm expecting given what I read (available in the link you provided; unfortunately, I'd read that earlier today as well). Also thank you to those behind the scenes, David, Richard H., and others. As the original team, we just want to know how to undo the damage and get back to square one. We will do our part by trying to convince OBC to do it (if they still can), but are not very optimistic, so would like to know if there are administrative alternatives. Thanks again, StandardbredHorse |
| 16) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31288 Posted 2 Mar 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Having visited OBC's profile, I can see he's now listed a forum--a competing forum to RDFRS. Disgruntled lone wolf hijacks high-ranking SETI team and destroys it. Day-um. Now what? I'm set to reg on his new competing forum and deciding what to do; how to open talks with a vandal. Negotiations with OBC will commence soon--could use some help from a professional, SETI.USA, maybe? Thanks, StandardbredHorse over and out *nicker* |
| 17) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31283 Posted 1 Mar 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Thank you Sekerob; that is exactly the point I was trying to make and you made it eloquently as well as with some brevity (my weak point). Ageless, thank you for the insight. When the original team ID was discovered thanks to you and other admins here and at BOINC, I was able to see what had happened and am investigating further now. My original point has still not been addressed, however--the BOINC software is supposed to have safeguards so that one person cannot do what's been done here. There are steadfast rules which have been in place since time immemoriam (BOINC-wise) that even a founder of a team cannot delete credits once they've been accumulated, and we have a situation in which this has happened--somewhere there's been a failure of the software. I'm team founder on many teams, and it simply will not allow me (I tested on PrimeGrid, Collatz, and one or two more to be sure of replicability and universality) to erase credits/delete a team with credits. I can kick someone off the team, but it does not reduce credits of our team. In this case, that situation was not prevented. Perverse (credit to Sekerob) is a word which describes the backdoor method by which the 'impossible' seems to have been done. Now we have to go contact this individual, 'beg' them to undo their vandalism to a multi-million credit team (irrespective of what their motive is; of that we can only guess), and have them rename it to restore our credits? Somehow that does not seem a just final resolution. So it DID happen to SETI.USA...wow. I guess the point I was trying to make is that the 'big boys' are susceptible to this abuse as well, so no team is safe, and that cements my point. I'm a lone voice here representing my team; it's been decided that a cacophony of histrionic voices would be counterproductive, but many teams may not show that restraint *when* this happens again (because obviously it will, unless specifically thwarted, discouraged, penalized, etc.). Being a founder of your own team shouldn't give you 'GOD'-like powers (analogy apropos given the name of our team), and it's apparent that the author of the BOINC stat software had this in mind when creating it. We will do our part by contacting this lone wolf who managed to undermine tens of millions of credits and hundreds of individuals and make a mockery of your statistical compilations. However, if you don't take any further action, the credibility of your stats will be at stake; in fact, that this happened to both our mega-team AND the top team on the site has already made a mockery of the whole statistical compilation competition. Yes, I know that science, in this case the search for ET, has a priori importance; however, the point of introducing some friendly competition via a way to quantify one's individual and collective contributions to whatever project's scientific goals adds incentive - this has been proven in innumerable ways, most positive in nature but also by things like 'team raiding' and the situation we're addressing in this thread. Again, to summarise, the fact that 15,000,000+ credits on your project and tens of millions more on others have been misappropriated/abused by one individual despite supposed safeguards undermines the whole thing. Why bother with my stats when I can build a team from scratch, ascend to competitive prominence in good faith, attract hundreds of members, and have it all wiped away in a couple of clicks by a (assumedly) single disgruntled individual? To all other teams and all other individuals involved, how does this situation affect your confidence in the integrity of SETI's stats? Are you sure of your team's ranking? If an email gets sent to your spam folder, if you're preoccupied or otherwise miss a message and your team gets taken over/renamed, how confident are you that you can restore order and that you won't be wiped off the map, to have to start from credit #1 again, maybe after years/millions? Perverse indeed. As a collective, our team is happy with and astounded by your rapid and thorough investigation; however, we are also quite dissatisfied with the proposed resolution of begging a saboteur to undo his/her sabotage. There must be another way? Regards, StandardbredHorse member of currently defunct Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science |
| 18) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31280 Posted 1 Mar 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
Here is the team at Seti. It seems the original team founder is still place, but he has just kicked everyone off the team and renamed it to "aset". I am a team owner, and though I can remove any and all members of a team, I cannot simply delete a team with credit. The BOINC software doesn't allow this. If you need, I can share the error message that is incurred when an attempt is made. In addition, credits accumulated while on the team stay with the team even when an individual leaves or is kicked off the team. What you described sounds like a case of vandalism - renaming a team and kicking off all the members; with foundership changes and some original emails not being updated, this can happen to any team--and will again, unless you set a precedent that this behaviour will not be tolerated. We would really appreciate it if you could somehow restore the original team, one with years of history and tens of millions of credits. Otherwise, we believe this renders the entire credit/cobblestone system meaningless. Imagine if this had happened to SETI.USA or L'Alliance Francophone - what sort of uproar would we have heard, and how would the integrity of the credit system have been criticised? Yet, we're not much smaller than those teams. We certainly appreciate all the hard work and investigation into the situation, and reversing this act of vandalism should be next on the agenda, and anything you can do to do so will be much appreciated. Again, the BOINC software is written so that even a team founder cannot simply delete a team with credit - I'm a team founder on quite a few projects, and I tried and failed. Sure, we've re-formed the team, but we're starting years from scratch, with most members unaware they've been removed from the team. In addition, we've put out a team-wide alert to stop work on SETI and focus on the many other projects on which we maintain a significant presence until the situation is resolved, since it would only complicate things further to continue without resolution. Hopefully this can happen. Thanks again for the help and attention and hard work - anything else you can do to undo the vandalism? Best regards, StandardbredHorse |
| 19) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31257 Posted 1 Mar 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
List of Deleted Members (from archive): *note - the members with new teams listed next to them legitimately left for other teams on different days (some over 2 years ago), but for some reason the credit they accumulated on the RDRFS team while in it have been deleted. *note 2: the "official" group created by Andrew Chalkley was the first attempt at recreating the team; the official team actually operates under the original name without the word 'official' added (no reason). A.C. was concerned that the name was hijacked and no longer available since there was weird stuff happening during the pandemonium, and lots of rumours, etc., so A.C. can be reinstated to the team if need be. Date deleted * Name * Number of Credits * New team (if any--cred was on RDFRS) 2010-02-27 3Lions 28,219.99 2010-02-27 Ace 13,789.40 Open University 2010-02-27 Ade 2,996.69 2010-02-27 Administrator 14,526.45 2010-02-27 Aggers 48,561.38 Bodgit, F**kup & Leggit 2010-02-27 AlunMurch 26,612.65 2010-02-27 AnchorWest 7,295.44 2010-02-27 Anders 12,015.46 2010-02-27 Andrew Chalkley 118,745.40 The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (Official) 2010-02-27 Anon327 18,594.13 2010-02-27 BayRidge 356,465.07 2010-02-27 Brandon Azzarella 667.86 2010-02-27 Brian Justin 672,094.59 2010-02-27 Chappers 111,587.32 2010-02-27 Chris 1,453.37 2010-02-27 Chris 8,458.98 2010-02-27 Chris Harrison 6,305.74 2010-02-27 Christopher Weigand 177,446.53 2010-02-27 Colin Jacobs 23,188.14 2010-02-27 Colin Steadman 1,257,785.89 2010-02-27 DEG 20,797.93 2010-02-27 Damien 7,602.97 2010-02-27 Darknase 39,593.51 2010-02-27 Desktop 14,087.05 2010-02-27 DocWebster 5,431.59 2010-02-27 DoktorSick 12,424.20 2010-02-27 Dr. Adam Joel Bukaty 2,357.28 2010-02-27 Drool 1,090.19 2010-02-27 Ed 33,651.32 2010-02-27 EeekiE 11,155.78 2010-02-27 EeekiE 44,516.34 2010-02-27 Exdeth 18,845.07 2010-02-27 Felipe Pina 7,502.39 2010-02-27 Fireball 192,519.23 2010-02-27 Gareth 33,656.72 2010-02-27 Geoff Coupe 182,755.59 2010-02-27 George Burruss 144.78 2010-02-27 GertFroebe 22,787.81 2010-02-27 GoranM 2,319.72 2010-02-27 Greenway 99,126.16 2010-02-27 Guildway 949,543.94 2010-02-27 Gurmit7431 4,911.73 2010-02-27 Hally 7,267.66 2010-02-27 Hans 105,394.45 2010-02-27 Hendy 6,529.23 2010-02-27 Ian Edmond 12,289.19 2010-02-27 Ircha 32.16 2010-02-27 Jake 9,991.40 2010-02-27 Jared 5,247.63 2010-02-27 Jeff 115,398.80 2010-02-27 Jeroen 34.56 2010-02-27 John Allen 12,079.66 2010-02-27 Jon 72,081.07 2010-02-27 Jonny 372.75 2010-02-27 Josh 418.38 2010-02-27 Jukka Lattu 1,206.06 2010-02-27 Kevin Swinton 922,216.84 2010-02-27 Kreell Keiser 29,096.03 2010-02-27 Kyle 17.48 2010-02-27 Kyle Rybski 102,775.79 2010-02-27 Lawrence D. Clark 15,581.91 2010-02-27 Lay 7,255.85 2010-02-27 Lee Christie 85.49 2010-02-27 Leila 284.77 2010-02-27 Lightborn 1,777.62 2010-02-27 Lightborn 3,974.87 2010-02-27 Loriba 42,824.97 Open University 2010-02-27 Magico 18,826.73 2010-02-27 Manitoba 644.00 2010-02-27 Marcus 7,412.86 2010-02-27 Martin 13,477.71 2010-02-27 Master of the Multiverse 94,153.37 2010-02-27 Matt 19,213.72 2010-02-27 Matt 473.58 2010-02-27 Maxley 143,583.00 2010-02-27 Michael 103,701.18 OcUK - Overclockers UK 2010-02-27 Michael Armenta 32.05 2010-02-27 Mikkel 119,156.20 2010-02-27 Miranda Hale 590.42 2010-02-27 Mitja 12,544.60 2010-02-27 Moisei 444.72 2010-02-27 MolecularMonkey 4,245.55 2010-02-27 Neil 31,950.38 2010-02-27 Neil Davies 465.95 2010-02-27 Nick 1,381.57 2010-02-27 Novak 42,801.99 2010-02-27 Ole 4,470.38 2010-02-27 Paco 6,001.27 2010-02-27 Pads 50,773.77 2010-02-27 PaulW 2,981.06 2010-02-27 Peter 535.82 2010-02-27 Pharyn Gula 1,372.37 2010-02-27 Philip 858.41 2010-02-27 Psycho 32,228.13 2010-02-27 RDFreader 186,689.77 2010-02-27 RWilson 2,423.61 2010-02-27 Rand0m 33,948.79 2010-02-27 Richard Fannin 852.20 2010-02-27 Samuel 351.65 2010-02-27 Sean Williams 152,490.90 2010-02-27 Sir Pwn4lot 15,304.15 2010-02-27 SpEcImEN128 14,236.46 2010-02-27 StarryEyed 9,375.79 2010-02-27 Stephen Boyd 934.15 2010-02-27 Steve 13,837.14 2010-02-27 Steve 312,677.53 2010-02-27 Steve Folly 145,247.16 2010-02-27 Steven Zaionz 805.51 2010-02-27 Stig Edvartsen 162.33 2010-02-27 Sujit Prasannakumar 52,703.48 2010-02-27 SverriOlsen 344.17 2010-02-27 The Revolutionary 13.19 2010-02-27 TheLordYourGod 3,310.32 2010-02-27 Tom 3,744.19 2010-02-27 Vanpastel 5,633.27 2010-02-27 Vegetable 686.29 2010-02-27 Wosret 561.92 2010-02-27 Xander 289.95 2010-02-27 Xenopsychosis 121,240.52 2010-02-27 ZetaSagittarii 42.98 2010-02-27 Zeus 2,033.83 2010-02-27 ZootZ 60,940.05 2010-02-27 andrew.lyons 7,228.60 2010-02-27 anniversary 46.71 2010-02-27 anomalous_result 24,449.12 2010-02-27 ashtonb 248,431.04 2010-02-27 bremas 27,502.87 2010-02-27 chamitoquai 92,613.21 UK BOINC Team 2010-02-27 compaqxp123 2,376.17 2010-02-27 daniel.frazer 161.65 2010-02-27 dinoboy 6,344.31 2010-02-27 empyredon 16,545.56 2010-02-27 eskimosound 38,268.09 2010-02-27 ff5167 89,814.24 2010-02-27 flankingenfilade 29,998.90 2010-02-27 flibble 678.92 2010-02-27 flyingscot 1,970.64 2010-02-27 gbamber 619,421.40 2010-02-27 gnasher373 32,546.84 2010-02-27 huusis 422,872.93 2010-02-27 jenny 452.98 2010-02-27 jsau 3,143.80 2010-02-27 lordy 25,880.66 2010-02-27 mdavies 34,975.82 2010-02-27 newolder 76,949.43 2010-02-27 njwong 13,947.06 2010-02-27 obscured by clouds 2,129,450.69 2010-02-27 philippic 154,269.25 2010-02-27 ron allan 1,233.03 2010-02-27 sam_j 105,184.80 2010-02-27 shaun.stuart 361,320.30 2010-02-27 simplyyes 0.06 2010-02-27 smooney3 3,975.95 2010-02-27 starship42 120,408.59 2010-02-27 steve8282 1,576,557.98 2010-02-27 tarnishedXhalo 12,692.35 2010-02-27 thegashman 3,292.17 2010-02-27 tomasp 112.76 2010-02-27 tony 9,624.11 2010-02-27 tubular_trekkie 41,912.29 2010-02-27 user 12,780.88 2010-02-27 zappa100 14,412.24 2010-02-27 |
| 20) Message boards : Questions and problems : Large team deleted - impossible?
Message 31256 Posted 28 Feb 2010 by StandardbredHorse |
[quote Jord, do you think there's any way you can persuade David to re-visit his, perhaps cursory, fly-by?[/quote] I know you're treading lightly, but I believe it was a *very* cursory fly-by, because my PM to David explained the situation quite well (and briefly, respecting time constraints and priorities); i.e., large team deleted (not one with 113 credits), millions of credits unaccounted for, shouldn't be possible in the software, individual members (hundreds) disappearing, etc....so the check-in by him was quite appreciated but very cursory--naturally someone is going to reform the team, and naturally it is going to be a day or so after the original was deleted; seeing that team IDs are sequentially assigned, that should have been a very easy thing to ascertain (no offense intended). |
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