You guys might want to read this thread at Rosetta.

It shows it is possible to take over a team, throw all of the existing members out and steal all of their credits. It has been going on across many projects with this Czhecoslovakian team called "Space family"

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=4238

http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=4238

URLified the URL. ;-)

So that's the next scandal then, huh?

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Very bad business this. Could generate enough bad feeling to cost projects a lot of volunteers if it gets out of hand.
I can't imagine the potential cost if the wider community got wind of this.

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Team Bitbendertech

If what is being said about Barbar and his 'team' is true, I consider this hijacking of teams to be very serious.

Physically less serious than the Wate affair because hijacking credits which are virtual is less damaging than hijacking computers which are real.

But morally perhaps more serious than the Wate affair if some people have tricked other members of the same community by testing and exploiting weaknesses in the teams system. If true, this is a gross betrayal of trust.

Here's the Space Family team on CPDN Beta1 (that's the original beta project, not the project we're crunching for now):

http://climateapps1.oucs.ox.ac.uk/beta/team_display.php?teamid=26

Two members with credit, Barbar and jvitovec, but as far as I can see neither ever downloaded a model. So I'm wondering where their credits came from. On CPDN projects the server never deletes your old tasks.

Hi Dark Angel

It's in the public domain already. Better for crunchers to know what's happening and see what's done about it. I don't think anyone should expect immediate action by project administrators as it's a novel situation and they'll need to think about what to do.

It has been going on across many projects with this Czhecoslovakian team called "Space family"...

If it matters, we "divorced" a while ago: -> a Czech team ;-)
(OK, the Czech flag remained the same as the former Czechoslovak one and one member is from Slovakia.)

Peter

Here's the Space Family team on CPDN Beta1 (that's the original beta project, not the project we're crunching for now):

http://climateapps1.oucs.ox.ac.uk/beta/team_display.php?teamid=26

Two members with credit, Barbar and jvitovec, but as far as I can see neither ever downloaded a model. So I'm wondering where their credits came from. On CPDN projects the server never deletes your old tasks.

Maybe they had really crunched some and detached their host(s) later? Barbar really DID crunch much, on CPDN too. (Just wanted to have more.) According to Boinc Synergy's links to ClimatePrediction.Net BOINC Team Statistics for Space Family, the team is really theirs, I assume renamed from their former Boinc Czech Team's one. Accordingly the BBC Climate Change Experiment BOINC Team Statistics for Space Family.

climateapps1's jvitovec seems to match climateapps2's Scotie.
climateapps1's Barbar seems to match climateapps2's Barbar and seasonal attribution's Barbar.

Last but not least, their own forum posts (from the times they were reaching 30 mil. credits) suggest, that they might have tried their tricks on CPDN teams too (well, this thread is mostly devoted to final teams renaming and synchronization on stats sites).

Peter

Here's the Space Family team on CPDN Beta1 (that's the original beta project, not the project we're crunching for now):

http://climateapps1.oucs.ox.ac.uk/beta/team_display.php?teamid=26

Two members with credit, Barbar and jvitovec, but as far as I can see neither ever downloaded a model. So I'm wondering where their credits came from. On CPDN projects the server never deletes your old tasks.

Maybe they had really crunched some and detached their host(s) later? Barbar really DID crunch much, on CPDN too. (Just wanted to have more.) According to Boinc Synergy's links to ClimatePrediction.Net BOINC Team Statistics for Space Family, the team is really theirs, I assume renamed from their former Boinc Czech Team's one. Accordingly the BBC Climate Change Experiment BOINC Team Statistics for Space Family.

climateapps1's jvitovec seems to match climateapps2's Scotie.
climateapps1's Barbar seems to match climateapps2's Barbar and seasonal attribution's Barbar.

Last but not least, their own forum posts (from the times they were reaching 30 mil. credits) suggest, that they might have tried their tricks on CPDN teams too (well, this thread is mostly devoted to final teams renaming and synchronization on stats sites).

Peter

Even if hosts are detached they remain in the system otherwise it breaks the relations in the database. IOW, a work unit cannot exist as "completed" if there's no agent to have done it, so the agent ID, and associated info, are permanent. If he'd ever done anything, it would be searchable down to precisely which units he'd done, how long they took, what credit he received/claimed, time and date work was sent/due/received ... the whole bit.

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Team Bitbendertech

Two members with credit, Barbar and jvitovec, but as far as I can see neither ever downloaded a model. So I'm wondering where their credits came from. On CPDN projects the server never deletes your old tasks.

Maybe they had really crunched some and detached their host(s) later?

Even if hosts are detached they remain in the system otherwise it breaks the relations in the database.

No. If there are no results bound to a host, it is just a single host item (with some historical credit and RAC) bound to user and can be freely discarded.

But Mo.v is right (what I overlooked) that beta projects mostly keep the results undeleted and deleting SUCH host might break a lot in DB (or at least leave much unrelated garbage, hard to collect and clean up).

[...] If he'd ever done anything, it would be searchable down to precisely which units he'd done, how long they took, what credit he received/claimed, time and date work was sent/due/received ... the whole bit.

Yes, if those hosts' work will remain undeleted. That's the question, whether/why these hosts' work was deleted if it was supposed to be kept intact.

Peter

Dunno quite how the stats pages work but here there seem to be points but can't find rigs with actual processed work units.

http://boinc.fzk.de/poem/team_members.php?teamid=182&offset=0&sort_by=expavg_credit

Also see:

http://boinc.fzk.de/poem/forum_thread.php?id=252

Post 2 in particular.

Dunno quite how the stats pages work but here there seem to be points but can't find rigs with actual processed work units.

http://boinc.fzk.de/poem/team_members.php?teamid=182&offset=0&sort_by=expavg_credit

IMO their POEM team is clean, it exists since 1 day after the founder's acccount was created. Just Daniel Stach (Hadra)'s computers are missing some 3000 credits, this can happen after detaching and deleting some computer from user's list.

Peter

It's early yet.

Two CPDN members who crunched for the original Beta1 project long before I joined it say that Carl (CPDN's former programmer) did in fact delete some workunits. These deleted WUs left traces on the database and I could bring up a web page for one. The members who'd crunched them kept their credits but these tasks disappeared from their accounts.

This was a very unusual situation which I didn't know about until today; I think it most probably explains the anomalies in these two crunchers' Beta1 credits. This is fortunate because it means there's probably only one type of scam involved ie the team hijacking.

The Space Family members on the CPDN main project look to me as if they earned their credits from legitimate crunching.

Control of the team has been handed back to the original, and once again active, founder.

As for Barbar ... I wish him every misfortune. The DC world will be better off without his sort.

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Team Bitbendertech

Control of the team has been handed back to the original, and once again active, founder.

That's just one of few tens of teams!

Peter

If you look at Boincstats combined stats, the "Space Family" team currently have 29,543,590 credits showing with 26 members. If you add up all of those 26 members credits, it comes to 14,349,699. Which leaves 15,193,891 unexplained credits at this point in time. Of course some of this could be because some members have left in the past and left their credits. Most of it is I suspect though from benefiting from hijacking teams. They dropped a place recently in the team stats, probably because we the Teddies reclaimed our team, thanks to the Rosetta admins.

Heard today of another few teams that have been taken over by "Barbar" and his "Space Family".

"Space Family" has started a new team as well at Rosetta too that was hijacked previously. He had been storing it with a temporary user name as founder before transferring foundership to himself. This guy needs taught a lesson.

BTW, this is a "Space Family" hijacked team at Ralph at home.

here

Looks like Barbar has used the temporary user name "ABC" before transfering foundership to himself in this case.

And This is the latest "Space Family" team at Rosetta That Barbar had been storing with the same temporary user name after hijacking it. He got this team going again after we at the Teddies reclaimed our team and ID. Interesting that "MIZ" has also joined this team in the last day. "MIZ" was also in the hijacked Teddies team, so looks a bit guilty too IMO.

here

It has been going on across many projects with this Czhecoslovakian team called "Space family"...

If it matters, we "divorced" a while ago: -> a Czech team ;-)
(OK, the Czech flag remained the same as the former Czechoslovak one and one member is from Slovakia.)

Peter

Sorry Peter. I'm from Scotland and my geography and history are obviously not up to scratch mate. Hope I didn't offend you or anyone else ? :thumbsup:

It has been going on across many projects with this Czhecoslovakian team called "Space family"...

If it matters, we "divorced" a while ago: -> a Czech team ;-)
(OK, the Czech flag remained the same as the former Czechoslovak one and one member is from Slovakia.)

Sorry Peter. I'm from Scotland and my geography and history are obviously not up to scratch mate. Hope I didn't offend you or anyone else ? :thumbsup:

Sure, no problem with this, just joking. I do like Czech folks and culture, I'm actually grown on it (nearly 1/2 of what I've seen and heard and learned in the far past. OK, a bit less).

(I should have been pleased that you mentioned my country too ;-)

Peter

Looks like Barbar has used the temporary user name "ABC" before transfering foundership to himself in this case.

Rosetta's "ABC" contacted me yesterday and asked me to translate Barbar's message. It might have been him personally.

Here is an itinerary, how Barbar has been travelling between Rosetta's teams -, Czech National Team, boinc.cz, BOINC.SK, xxx, xx, Space Family a.k.a. Czech Boinc Team a.k.a. (possibly) XM Satellite Radio and Teddies. To clean up traces? (He jumped more often than Star Gate people did ;-)

Someone interested in other projects?

Peter