RE: SETI@Home - Safe or Exploitable?

["Trevor Cushen" <Trevor.Cushen () sysnet ie>]

I know that products like Ettercap can spoof DNS to trick a workstation
into going to one site when it wanted to go to another.  If someone was
to set this up knowing that your workstation will want to go to Seti and
then they direct them to another site.  Could they trick your computer
into downloading files.  I think Seti might do MD5 checks on the files
but worth checking.  After that how would they get the falsly downloaded
files to run if they were executable???.  Purely a theory but I
wonder????

Trevor Cushen
Sysnet Ltd

www.sysnet.ie
Tel: +353 1 2983000
Fax: +353 1 2960499



-----Original Message-----
From: counterpol () shaw ca [mailto:counterpol () shaw ca] 
Sent: 22 October 2002 19:55
To: security-basics () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: SETI@Home - Safe or Exploitable?


In-Reply-To:
<!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAAt/2qR/Xdb06rl3cHeaFPJsKA
AAAQAAAA8MAsuxLIM0Wec26NJ8lGagEAAAAA () gwstephens com>



> Never gave this too strong a consideration until I read a TechRepublic

> article pondering the safety of running distributed computing programs

> on corporate computers.  While I discourage our employees from

> installing personal software on company computers and I monitor our

> workstations for unapproved installations, I do not want to be

> completely dictatorial and allow some seemingly innocuous software to 
> be

> installed once I satisfy my own security/licensing/stability issues.

> Seti@Home is one such program.  While it is understandable that there

> could be some concern caused by the use of this program because it

> remotely sends and retrieves data for processing, I have never heard of

> SETI being exploited.  Any thoughts, opinions, or facts the community

> would like to share would be appreciated.



I don't run SETI@home but recall a couple of years ago that there was
once 

reports of a vulnerability and exploit using SETI based on user 

information in SETI files stored on the user's PC, I believe. See

http://www.arstechnica.com/archive/2001/0501-1.html. Another reference, 

http://seti.sentry.net/archive/public/1999/6-99/0195.html, asks a
similar 

question but you will note no one answered it in the seti mail list.



Regards

counterpol



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