Scientists, be on guard ... ET might be a malicious hacker

[IndianaGreen]

Scientists, be on guard ... ET might be a malicious hacker

Ian Sample, science correspondent
Friday November 25, 2005
The Guardian

As if spotty teenagers releasing computer viruses on to the internet from darkened rooms were not enough of a headache. According to a scientific report, planet Earth's computers are wide open to a virus attack from Little Green Men.

The concern is raised in the next issue of the journal Acta Astronautica by Richard Carrigan, a particle physicist at the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. He believes scientists searching the heavens for signals from extra-terrestrial civilisations are putting Earth's security at risk, by distributing the jumble of signals they receive to computers all over the world.

The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (Seti) project, based at the University of California in Berkeley, uses land-based telescopes to scour the universe for electromagnetic waves. Just as stray radio and TV broadcasts are now zooming away from Earth at the speed of light, the Seti scientists hope to pick up stray signals, or even intentional interplanetary broadcasts, emitted from other civilisations.

All signals picked up by Seti are broken up and sent across the internet to a vast band of volunteers who have signed up for a Seti screensaver, which allows their computers to crunch away at the signals, when they are not at their desks.

So far, the only signals detected are bursts of radiation from stars and a murmur of background noise left over from the big bang. But, says Dr Carrigan, improved telescopes and faster computers mean scientists are ever more likely to detect a signal from extra-terrestrials.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,16559,1650296,00.html

[xchrom]

1. paranoid much?

[regnaD kciN]

3. Why do you hate Earth?

At least some of us are willing to carry out the War on Intergalactic Terror. We can't afford to wait until the smoking gun takes the form of a Death Ray from Space. We must invade Neptune at once!

[xchrom]

4. can ya WAIT just a minute -- my ray gun is on recharge.

you guys are always in such a hurry -- my uniform isn't even ready --

[bahrbearian]

7. You go to space with the Army you've got ,not the one you want.

[henslee]

2. Funny, I was just wondering if ET's were already downloading music

from itunes and browsing on ebay. And then I thought... what if it was a total misconception to think they were inclined to be radio wave/computer oriented, that maybe they have some sort of sophisticated, pure analong clean-signal telepathy.

[PurgedVoter]

5. We are entirely justified in putting root kits on Earth Computers!

Your violation of our patents cannot be further allowed. Sex, we patented it eons ago. Breathing, you are violating at least 7000 patents just by respiration. Using protein code sequences is a major patent violation. Speech, sending electronic data, using electromagnetic force, all of these are violations. Besides all of that, you put an offensive name on our sun and have taken pictures of it without permission. Anyway, we have to attack first or we too will have a Star bucks and a McDonald's on every corner.

[MrBenchley]

6. LOL!

This is one of the funniest threads I've seen on DU in quite awhile...kudos all!

[Tesha]

8. He's nuts, N-V-T-S, nuts! (NT)

[Solon]

9. LOL...

Talk about stupidity, there are two things that really wouldn't allow for ET to hack our computers. The first is the distance, it would take years for the hack to be sent, and then recieved, and it would take double whatever the light year distance is to have a two way communication between their computers and ours. Second is this, even if the signal is in strict binary for computer readability, it is highly unlikely that ANY of our systems could properly decode it anyways. They would, at the very least, have to have the api specs for our Operating Systems, and hardware specs as well. Info that, unless they already have spys here, is impossible to get. This is stupidity run amok.