Posts by tictoc

1) Message boards : News : Coronavirus update from David Baker. Thank you all for your contributions! (Message 99153)
Posted 26 Sep 2020 by tictoc
Post:
To Stop BoincTasks from opening this web page:

BoincTasks -> Extra -> Boinc Settings -> Notices : Set "Check for new notices" = 0 which disables the function that opens the web page.

Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but if BoincTasks can open a web page, any program can open a web page, download an undesirable program and execute the just downloaded program. This would be such a massive security breach that I must be missing something.


No idea if BoincTasks, all by itself, can open a web page, but BOINCTasks isn't at fault here. This capability is built directly into the BOINC client. The multiple tabs issue is just a result of BOINCTasks querying the BOINC client for new notices.
In BOINC Manager new Notices are queried every time that a user clicks the Notices tab. Notices can be completely disabled by adding a flag in the cc_config.xml configuration file.

<no_info_fetch>1</no_info_fetch>
*Note this will also disable the project list for adding new projects

Ultimately, running code on your computer is how BOINC fundamentally works. Unless you are re-compiling the applications from every project (if they are open source), auditing the application code, and running your own custom binary, you are already running binaries that could be doing just about anything on your computer. The ability of a project to auto-open a compromised web page is pretty meaningless, when you realize that you are already running a black box binary (for projects with closed source applications). Project reputation and trust is really the foundation of any distributed computing project, especially the projects that don't open source the code that they are running on your hardware.

The ability to embed an iframe into BOINC notices is silly, and a pretty big inconvenience to anyone that doesn't realize what's going on.

The project Notices are just HTML/ CSS, so any project can populate them with anything. This could probably be fixed by either adjusting the flags in the iframe embedded in the Notice, or just removing it altogether. If the video is hosted locally, along with the other Rosetta content/data, than I imagine it might be able to be embedded in the Notice using the HTML5 video tag, without opening a link in the user's browser with a redirect to youtube.
2) Message boards : News : Coronavirus update from David Baker. Thank you all for your contributions! (Message 99135)
Posted 26 Sep 2020 by tictoc
Post:
Falconet, you're right. It's in the BoincTasks Settings -> Tab Notices.
I had set "Check for new notices every (0=Disabled)" to 1 minute. I now disabled that, but meanwhile removed the Rosetta project to try to get rid of it.
Even that did not help. The first time I even thought it was a computer virus and not something about coronavirus ;)

Edit: Meanwhile I attached Rosetta again and it's reproducable.
Exiting BoincTasks stops the video popup or as mentioned before disable check for new notices.


All I did was to close the notice. In the notices tab, use the red X against it.

Have you reported the bug to Boinctasks? Fred'll sort it if you post in the forum.

It's really weird since this has never happened with another notice. I assume this Rosetta notice had a differently coded link that Boinctasks decided to launch?


This is 100% not a BOINCTasks issue. No BOINC tasks here, and as soon as BoincManager is opened, a new tab is opened in my browser to the linked video. More than likely it's because rather than a just a link to the video the video is actually embedded in the Notice.

tictoc@TickTockArch $ boinccmd --host localhost:31433 --get_notices
5: (22-Sep-2020 00:16:33) Here is a short video of David Baker describing some exciting results from <i>de novo</i> designs targeting SARS-Cov-2.<br />
<br />
Thank you all for your contributions to this research!  Although R@h was not directly used for the work described in the publication (link provided below), R@h was used for designing relevant scaffolds. Additionally, there are currently many similar designs that bind SARS-Cov-2 and related targets that were engineered using R@h.<br />
<br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ODEIN5V3yLg" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ODEIN5V3yLg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/embed/ODEIN5V3yLg</a><br />
<br />
More information is available from the publication, <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/09/08/science.abd9909" rel="nofollow">De novo design of picomolar SARS-CoV-2 mini protein inhibitors</a>.


**Edit** Forgot to say congrats on the work, and thanks for the update. You might want to clean up the notice a bit. ;)






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