Stealth Computing Abuses TCP Checksums

[Paul Pomes]

At 11:25 PM 8/29/01 -0700, Bill Stewart <bill.stewart at pobox.com> wrote:

>A group of researchers at Notre Dame figured out how to use the
>TCP Checksum calculations to get other computers to do number-crunching for them.
>
>        "Below, we present an implementation of a parasitic computer
>        using the checksum function.  In order for this to occur,
>        one needs to design a special message that coerces a target server
>        into performing the desired computation."
>
>The article has the amount of great mathematical depth you'd expect from CNN :-)
>But it does say that the paper will be published in "Nature" this week.

And the message in my mailbox immediately after the above was Nature's ToC
including:

Parasitic computing
A-L BARABASI, V W FREEH, H JEONG & J B BROCKMAN
http://www.nature.com/nlink/v412/n6850/abs/412894a0_fs.html

Cheers,
Paul Pomes