It's only a matter of time once money is offered, before some sneaky hacker figures out how to make it look as if their computer did calculations that it did not-allowing them to earn cash while they play computer games or surf the Net. Philippe Golle and Ilya Mironov, both graduate students in computer science at Stanford University , have recently developed a new way to catch the cheaters. If a participant returns the data without finding the planted hits, the data was never searched. For instance, say a company was hired to unveil a secret key used to encrypt a plain-text message. Each participant's computer must study thousands of possible keys.
Some people cheat even when no payment is involved.
The motivation must be a desire to be listed as a top performer on the project's website. Archives - Archives of past weeks' Daily Selected News Stories. All Rights Reserved. All other copyrights remain property of their respective owners.