[extropy-chat] SPAM: ISPs get serious

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Nov 04, 2003 at 08:01:53AM -0800, Spike wrote:

> 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

You will see it on load monitor (a good rootkit would catch that), 
and on network traffic (if it's generating
a lot of traffic, can be also addressed by a root kit -- will require
multiple penetration to address that on embedded firewall level -- ASIC
switches and attached LEDs are utterly immune to penetration, unless you
smuggle magic dark LED signatures into the factory). Also, most current 
OSses (with the possible
exception of OS X and 2.6 Linux kernel) will become visibly more sluggish. It
will take user and use patter detection to make it really stealthy. 

It could be done, but it's way beyond the skill level of even a good cracker
group.

> 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

Try the Internet.

> thousands of computers' idle CPU cycles, enough to

How do several million machines sound like?

> quickly find the 10million digit prime and win the
> $100k.

People who can do that probably make more than $100k/month. 

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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