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RE: Investigating the Pomegranate Network Mining Gridcoin
How different is this from viruses that mine bitcoin? How can running anything on a users hardware without his consent be considered legal? It doesn't even matter if it costs energy or not, it doesn't matter if it is for research for the greater good, it doesn't matter...
It's different because nobody had the software unwillingly installed on their computer.
I reacted when the article was posted.
From the article: "it is highly likely Pomegranate is earning GRC illegitimately through unwanted software installed unknowingly on victims' computers".
By now there is more information from the comments and I no longer see the issue. I checked the website and it looks quite clear to me that when installing you are donating computer power.
It is the users responsibility to make sure that what he installs is legit, from a trusted source and functions as intended.
As long as they are contributing to the BOINC projects, paid or not, I see no issue. I have been BOINCing for 15 or so years. Don't really care what client.
I do understand big miners get nervous. Their magnitude drops and they can't do anything about it but to try and blame someone else.
Does gridcoin now need to 'check' what is used to contribute to science? Being the BOINC internet cop. Good luck with that.
As vortac says: it's still contributing to science.
I would like to return to some of the bullet points here:
Yes, but the clients mining BOINC were not downloaded off the website. This was just stated explicitly.
Actually, we found out about this months ago and did nothing, mainly due to CM being very opposed to saying anything publicly. It was several big discussions in the Slack channel between many users that made us decide to say something. I personally do not care for mag - check my project selection if you don't believe me (Einstein@home on all GPUs - literally the least efficient).
The other reason is several projects are getting many corrupted results and burned work units, as explained. The Pomegranate account has not fixed this issue.
Nope, not at all.
If Gridcoin ops had not acted a few months ago, we would still have Kikipope around. How does it look for BOINC and Gridcoin if the main contributors are these kind of networks?
Let me reiterate: We all want CE to be legit, because their contribution to science is great. I know of several people, including myself, who reached out over the last months and were ignored. Ideally, we would like these concerns alleviated and move on.
You have never contacted me, nor has anyone else. I learned of this page thanks to a Google alert.
We have a website with a contact form. We have an address. We have email, we have a phone number. Contacting me is not rocket science - and of course I would respond to something like this.
I note your comment about running the least-earning project. Good to know, and that does make me more reassured as to your motives - if not your methods...
EDIT: No longer reassured one bit. Deltik's lies about us being bundled with malware cannot be unintentional, IMHO. His own evidence says the opposite of what he claims it says.
Ye, but the connection between 'Pomegranate' and 'Charity engine' was not public, so the accusers couldn't use, or even find the contact form.
They knew Pom was CE for ages. Hence this hit piece.
First we knew they had any questions at all? A Google alert about this post.
That's not honest journalism, it's a smear campaign.
Summarized: CE says the are using your computing power when you install their SW. Their SW downloads and installs something else, BOINC, whatever version, from whatever location, modified or not.
It's not unusual that an installer downloads and install other installers. The average user doesn't care.
If the science results are ok for the projects there is no issue for BOINC as a concept.
To me BOINC and Gridcoin don't look any different because of it. The user makes choices and if legit that's the end I think. The grcpool doesn't allow voting. Does that make contribution to science any less? Does that make it worse for BOINC?
This article has botnet in the title, a word with a very negative connotation. It boils down to not agreeing to the way the client is downloaded and someone not responding to you guys?
In the end it seems like a storm in a teacup. I fail to see the issue here. The internet is full of strange things I don't support. Fine, I just don't use them, if they're no good they die anyway.
Edit: before all wars break loose I'm not supporting CE either, don't know what it is and not interested.
I don't recall any such communications regarding your allegations against CE.
I am indeed opposed to public slander & doxing of individuals of whom you suspect are committing serious large scale computer crime (running a botnet will get you life in jail).
The best course of action is to contact the BOINC projects direclty, specifically their cyber security divisions - Oxford, IBM, LHC, they all have dedicated teams whom can investigate such claims with greater access to volunteer data.
If not BOINC projects then you should have contacted the authorities with the information you believe you have. Posting a smear piece like this without concrete evidence is likely going to get you sued by CE for public defamation/slander.
We've contributed over a hundred million core hours to science since we launched in 2011.
I can give you another titbit which you are free to check too. In our early days, I went out and raised extra seed funding just to give $60k to the BOINC project at Berkeley, which was faced with shutting down because of a six month funding gap.
You can probably start to see why I'm fuming at this hit piece.