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SETI's Anti-Cheating Strategy

Posted by michael on from the lots-and-lots-of-proctors dept.

mtDNA writes: "There's an article in the New York Times about the strategies SETI is using to avoid fraudulent reports. One trick they're using is multiple analyses of the same data. Another strategy is the use of "ringer" data, where they send you fake data for which they know the results." One of the researchers has several postscript papers on his home page - Incentives for Sharing in Peer-to-Peer Networks, Uncheatable Distributed Computations, Distributed Computing with Payout. In related news, ProcessTree apparently sent out an email to participants indicating it is closing up shop, so although SETI seems to be chugging along, the idea of distributed computing as a business model is perhaps a bit premature.

3 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. AH! by HongPong · · Score: 5

    But the problem is not ordinary punks hacking the client to create false positives. No, the problem are those Beowulf clusters in underground NSA facilities making all the false negatives!

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    --hongpong.com
  2. Why? by clinko · · Score: 5

    My questions is Why anyone would want to cheat SETI? I could just see the guy now:

    "LOOK! i'm high on the hours list with 31337 years of data done on my computer for SETI. I RULE! Oh god, I wish I were dead..."


  3. Shocking! by s20451 · · Score: 5

    So somebody's trying to manipulate the system in order to artificially inflate a meaningless number in a database! How shocking! (Score=5, Insightful)

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