TOPIC: Fighting Covid with Distributed Computing (you can help!)

BOINC-wide team created! Here's the info page: boinc.berkeley.edu/teams/team_display.php?teamid=4596

edit: Rosetta@Home does not seem to support boinc-wide teams, so you'll need to join the following team for the Rosetta project: boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/team_display.php?teamid=19992

With the first wave of virus simulation complete, folding at home is now simulating candidates of existing drugs to treat covid:

foldingathome.org/2020/04/13/new-simulations-to-search-for-covid-19-treatment-via-repurposing-existing-ntp-analog-drugs-that-target-viral-rna-replication/

Arstechnica has a little write up on how folding at home has gotten where it is today:

arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/how-the-pandemic-revived-a-distributed-computing-project-and-made-history/

Ro-gan wrote: Astronomical and Mathematical Organizations have been doing things like this for decades.

But hard pass from me. The last thing I want is some organization having access to my computer and having my identity/monies stolen from someone in that organization who is unhappy or someone outside the organization who takes advantage of this program.

For anyone that shares this concern (I didn’t think anyone would actually be concerned about this, or I would have put it in the first post)

boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/BOINC_Security

Excerpts

Is BOINC safe? The short answer: in practice, yes. After 8 years, running on millions of PCs, there have been no security incidents due to BOINC.

Suppose you volunteer for a project, and hackers break into that project's server and replace its programs with malware. Will the malware be downloaded and run on your PC?

BOINC uses a mechanism called code signing that makes this impossible, as long as projects use proper practices.
Code signing is based on *public-key cryptography*. Each project has a code-signing key pair consisting of a public key and a private key. The public is sent to your client when you add the project. The private key is used to create "signatures" for programs. The BOINC client will only run programs with valid signatures.

Projects are instructed to keep the private key only on a computer that is never connected to a network, and that is physically secure. This computer is used to create signatures. As long as these instructions are obeyed, hackers cannot sign malware, even if they break into the project's server. Therefore they cannot trick BOINC into running malware

The above mechanisms assume that your BOINC client software is valid. What if hackers break into the BOINC server and replace the BOINC installers with malware?
On Windows, you are protected from this by another form of code signing. When you run the BOINC installer on Windows, the first thing you should see is:

<windows certificate screen shot >

This verifies that the installer is valid.

this is awesome

For those of you curious to learn more about the open science COVID Moonshot---one of several COVID-19 drug discovery efforts that Folding@home is working closely to support---check out this video from Coffee Break that includes interviews with the scientists behind the Moonshot collaboration:

Coffee Break Video:
COVID Moonshot: covid.postera.ai/covid
All molecules and data: covid.postera.ai/covid/submissions/compounds
Discussion forums: discuss.postera.ai/c/covid
COVID Moonshot GoFundMe: www.gofundme.com/f/covidmoonshot
Recent webinar for scientists:

Ted talk from David Baker (scientist in charge of Rosetta at home):

www.ted.com/talks/david_baker_5_challenges_we_could_solve_by_designing_new_proteins/up-next?language=en

I haven’t been keeping up with posting here, but there is another major project that you can contribute computer time to, to add to the list . IBM’s open pandemics:

www.worldcommunitygrid.org/research/opn1/overview.do

Rosetta@Home just announced a big breakthrough for Covid - a lab successful anti viral:

twitter.com/RosettaAtHome

That's awesome news!

Super cool, Endgame! Thanks for the update!

Thanks for the update Endgame. Super cool!