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Is SETI a Security Risk?
Dotnaught writes "Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, fears the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) may be putting the earth at risk. As reported in the Guardian, Carrigan frets that alien radio signals could pose a security risk. The report cites a 2003 paper entitled "Do potential Seti signals need to be decontaminated?" but Carrigan's website has more details. Basically, he's calling for isolation of SETI computers and additional security measures. He writes, "To paraphrase Cocconi and Morrison for the possibility of a malevolent SETI signal ...the probability of a contaminated SETI signal is difficult to estimate; but if we never consider it the chance of infection is not zero."" Frankly, I'm more worried about some phishing malcontent then I am about the Grays, but maybe that's just me.
The possibility that extraterrestrials will take over SETI is pretty remote, but SETI is still a security risk. In decreasing level of probability, I'd say the risks are:
- someone could hack the server and send out malicious code with the next software update
- someone could hack the data stream and inject malicious data into it (assuming there really is such a thing as malicious data, which I find hard to believe).
- someone terrestrial could broadcast malicious data in such a way that the SETI telescopes pick it up and think that it's ET in origin.
- an ET could broadcast malicious data, after having picked up a copy of the SETI software and analyzing it.
- an ET could broadcast malicious data without knowing what the receiver is like (the worry describe in TFA).