Idle computers working while professors enhance security
By Linda Evans
Editor, RichmondNow
You might not know anything about genetic sequencing or climate change predictions.
But your computer does.
And that knowledge can be harnessed, along with that of millions of other personal computers around the world, to perform tasks that previously only could be accomplished on expensive supercomputers.
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Barry Lawson, Doug Szajda, Micheal Pohl, '07, and Jason Owen will examine security of volunteer computer platforms under a grant of more than $400,000 from National Science Foundation.
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Called distributed volunteer computing platforms, the linking of personal computers through the Internet to accomplish large-scale calculations for academic or commercial purposes is growing. However, there are problems with using so many anonymous, volunteer computers, says Dr. Doug Szajda, assistant professor of computer science.
"Providing assurance of results is difficult because the environment of each volunteer is outside the control of the computation supervisor," he explains. Also a growing issue is the security of project data. Project supervisors want to receive the assistance of volunteer computers without divulging their proprietary data, he says.
Szajda and his colleagues, Dr. Barry Lawson, assistant professor of computer science, and Dr. Jason Owen, assistant professor of statistics, have been working together on solving these problems since fall 2002.
This year, they received a grant from the National Science Foundation for $401,193 to study the security of distributed volunteer computing platforms. The grant allows them to continue their research for three more years, including setting up a distributed volunteer computing platform at the University and incorporating the work of undergraduate student researchers, who previously had to apply for student research fellowships from the University.
"The potential impact of this research is extensive," says Szajda. Applications for secure computing platforms exist in biomedical research, such as computational chemistry, genetic sequence comparisons and protein folding operations. In addition, "access to more secure computing platforms is likely to draw commercial applications and will foster future inter-disciplinary research among scientists and practitioners," he says.
Typically, distributed volunteer computing platforms are used by people who have big jobs with a lot of processing that can be split into units. Volunteers who have downloaded a special screensaver receive work units when their computers are idle but connected to the Internet. The personal computer then performs the calculations and returns the results to the project manager automatically.
Existing platforms at Stanford, University of California at Berkeley and other universities are working on calculations related to AIDS and cancer research, Szajda says. Another is looking at how proteins fold to create or match certain drugs. The University of Richmond platform, which will make use of existing computers on campus, will use a modified version of the computer code developed for the Berkeley platform. The three professors plan to use it to test some security solutions that have been proved in theory but not in practice.
"The University's IS department, and Pat Schoknecht in particular, have been very helpful in planning for this project," says Lawson.
Because existing platforms have experienced malicious behavior on the part of some volunteers, "we have to assume they are out there ... and would try to cheat," says Owen. He says the Richmond team will explore the use of artificial intelligence to detect malicious behavior. "It's not about prevention," Lawson says, "but risk management." He said Andy White, '07, of Asheville, N.C., will work with the professors on this aspect of the project.
Other students also will be involved. Greg Steffensen, '06, of Greensburg, Pa., is working on understanding and modifying the Berkeley code.
Michael Pohl, '07, of Cross, S.C., is working on data privacy for his computer science thesis. He is second author on a paper the team will have published in February in the Proceedings of the 2006 ISOC Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium, a refereed, competitive publication.
In addition, the project "will facilitate collaboration across disciplines and will result in development of special topics courses in related areas," says Szajda.
Use of distributed volunteer computer platforms is already big and growing each year. The SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence) project, for instance, has been ongoing for six years, with some volunteers processing an average of 1,000 work units per day, says Szajda.
"Our research will attempt to answer existing fundamental questions, thereby promoting even more widespread use of these platforms," says Szajda.
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