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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.
- Raw signal in memory must bootstrap to status of operating program
- Program must then untangle the inner workings of the host. (Is it possible to now build a diagnosis program to determine the operating set of an unfamiliar computer?)
I'm not a software engineer but... no, wait, I AM a software engineer, so I'm curious, how does this 'virus' execute step 1 [Buffer Overrun & Privilage Escalation] without doing step 2 first [Determine instruction set for system] (Which incidentally requires step one to have been performed first.)As far as I see it, theres as much chance of data in the recieve buffer created by background radiation being a viable 'virus' as there is a deliberate chunk of data will be
This sounds suspiciously like
1) Send malicious code
2)
3) Infect universe (and profit)
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
...completely out of his mind?
;-)
Granted - once we had contact any alien civilisation could also get into a situation where they could potentially send malware to Earth.
But - isn't Seti right now looking at data from stars a good number of lightyears away? How likely is it that aliens on the off chance of infecting a computer would send out virusses and/or worms that would run on current CPUs and chipsets, using security holes that are current NOW? (Remember - if aliens 10 lightyears away would get hold of enough Earth signals to decode Intel assembly language and to understand Windows security holes, even if they could decipher all that overnight and write a terminal computer virus in another hour - it still took them 10 years to receive the signals from us and it would take another 10 years for them to come back). How likely is it that a virus working on 20 year old hard-/software (including OS and everything) would still work on a large portion of critical infrastructure today?
Given that Seti only checks data, but doesn't try to execute it, shields us even further from the whole thing...
Or - is Mr. Carrigan now assuming that there is an imminent threat of an attack by Bin Laden against the Internet - through Seti@home ?
Now that would make even Bush sound perfectly sane...
Because, of course, the aliens use binary Von Neumann machines with register/accumulator architectures, and instruction sets we're familiar with.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
... of someone who's very knowledgeable in one technical field (in this case, particle physics) assuming that this knowledge carries over into another, almost unrelated technical field (in this case, computer science.) I'm sure that Dr. Carrigan is a very, very smart guy, but odds are he uses his computer as a tool without a whole lot more understanding of its inner workings than that possessed by the typical business user.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It's pretty sad that they're actually wasting brain cycles thinking about threats like this. No, the risk of infection isn't zero. But it's damn close to zero. It isn't zero if you 'secure' SETI systems, either. It isn't even zero if you dismantle the SETI telescopes.
But money spent on this is money better spent elsewhere, practically no matter where else you spend it. This should have been in the 'It's Funny, Laugh' topic.
(Prediction: this will appear on Schneier's blog by end of day tomorrow)
SETI data is pretty much indistinguishable from random numbers. In fact, the extremely rare patterned sequences of data are the holy grail of the pursuit.
.... most likely lots of virus code has already been processed because random noise will eventually produce every virus, just like monkeys and keyboards will produce Shakespeare. One could, I guess, hold the position that by processing random data we are putting ourselves at risk and that rings more true than some civilization producing intentional sequences with malicious intent.
So
is sending signals out. Although we may think we are saying hello, the receiver may be thinking, "Hmmm, I do need more meat in my diet."
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I belive he's talking about those pesky abstractions we all use without a thought everyday. Basically, the scenario unfolds in this way: you recieve information from a entity and the ideas contained within said information can be helpful (like Universal Cure) to harmful or disruptive (something along the lines of a memetic virus).
It would be a nasty trick for an alien civilization to give us the most destructive weapon possible without giving us accompaning social skill's as well. Or we could figuratively be on the 'beads' end in some initial contact scenario.
To quote Morris Berman, "An idea is something you have, an ideology is something that has you.". An old alien civilization out there could just be very good at constructing ideologies. I'm not saying now is the time to consider this chance, rather that it should be considered when alien contact occurs.
Shh.