[extropy-chat] SPAM: ISPs get serious

[Spike]

> Robert J. Bradbury
> Subject: [extropy-chat] SPAM: ISPs get serious
> 
> I had it happen to me (my laptop was once hijacked by some hackers
> in Eastern Europe in an attempt to win some distributed computing
> contest).  It can happen to you as well...


Interesting.  I have been speculating for some time
that a clever hacker could steal one's idle CPU cycles
and do it in such a way that it would be nearly
undetectable, even on a laptop, if they weren't too
greedy.  Yesterday we had someone on primenet report
that GIMPS was using only 50% of the idle CPU time,
and that a process identifying itself as System
Idle Process was using 50%.  Surely some hacker
has already done it.  Now all she need to do is
send that to some big company, and she could steal
thousands of computers' idle CPU cycles, enough to
quickly find the 10million digit prime and win the
$100k.
 
spike