Help on Dimes

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Freewolf

Diamond Member
Feb 15, 2001
9,673
1
81
They actually send an email to Cox.
It is still running on my machines ( I never stopped)

"Dear Sir/Madam,
My name is Eran Shir and I am the manager of the DIMES research
project (www.netDimes.org) which aims to map the evolution of the
Internet
with the help of many volunteers from more than 80 countries. The
DIMES project has got a great reputation with articles about it
appearing
in some of the major journals and media outlets in the world, such as
Science magazine, Slashdot, IEEE Infocom conference and others.
Recently it has come to my attention that one of our volunteers,
which is CCed on this letter, has got an email from you claiming that
he has on his computer
a malicious program which does network probing that are not allowed.
It seems that the trigger to your correspondence was the working of
our research program,
which performs pings and traceroute from our volunteers computers. In
order to not be seen as a problematic software we have hard coded
into our agent
a very strong rate limit, and the agent does at most 4 measurements
per minute, each of them containing either 4 traceroutes or 4 pings.
This amounts to a very small network print
which does not suppose to cause any alarms, and indeed it does not,
as you are the first ISP which approached our volunteers in the last
six months or more.
While I understand that your Intrusion Detection Systems are probably
triggered automatically I would be very grateful if you would allow
the user jamesfreewolf@cox.net to continue
contributing to our research endeavor. Of course if you have certain
IP addresses you wish us not to probe, we would be more than happy to
remove them permanently from our list of IPs.
Also, you can feel free to download our agent's source code and
inspect it yourself, to make sure it does no harm, and to contact us
with any question/comment.

Warmest regards,
Eran Shir
The DIMES project
 

petrusbroder

Elite Member
Nov 28, 2004
13,348
1,155
126
Nice! I stopped one of my agents, because the ISP asked really nicely and very politely. OK it makes me slower to rise in the ranks, but as DIMES says: "It is the location which is important, not the CPUs or bandwidth..." :)
 

mrwizer

Senior member
Nov 7, 2004
671
0
0
Originally posted by: Freewolf
They actually send an email to Cox.
It is still running on my machines ( I never stopped)

"Dear Sir/Madam,
My name is Eran Shir and I am the manager of the DIMES research
project (www.netDimes.org) which aims to map the evolution of the
Internet
with the help of many volunteers from more than 80 countries. The
DIMES project has got a great reputation with articles about it
appearing
in some of the major journals and media outlets in the world, such as
Science magazine, Slashdot, IEEE Infocom conference and others.
Recently it has come to my attention that one of our volunteers,
which is CCed on this letter, has got an email from you claiming that
he has on his computer
a malicious program which does network probing that are not allowed.
It seems that the trigger to your correspondence was the working of
our research program,
which performs pings and traceroute from our volunteers computers. In
order to not be seen as a problematic software we have hard coded
into our agent
a very strong rate limit, and the agent does at most 4 measurements
per minute, each of them containing either 4 traceroutes or 4 pings.
This amounts to a very small network print
which does not suppose to cause any alarms, and indeed it does not,
as you are the first ISP which approached our volunteers in the last
six months or more.
While I understand that your Intrusion Detection Systems are probably
triggered automatically I would be very grateful if you would allow
the user jamesfreewolf@cox.net to continue
contributing to our research endeavor. Of course if you have certain
IP addresses you wish us not to probe, we would be more than happy to
remove them permanently from our list of IPs.
Also, you can feel free to download our agent's source code and
inspect it yourself, to make sure it does no harm, and to contact us
with any question/comment.

Warmest regards,
Eran Shir
The DIMES project


I am assuming that they have not responded yet. Let us know anything that develops from this.

And it was nice of the Dimes guys to do that. :)
 

BlackMountainCow

Diamond Member
May 28, 2003
5,759
0
0
I also received a not so friendly email from my ISP asking me to stop probing certain IP ranges so frequently. So I shut down DIMES on all my machines about a week ago. After some email went back and forth between me and my ISP I had to come to the decision to stop DIMES to prevent any further trouble and probably losing my internet connection.

I'm just glad I was able to make the 50.000 points I wanted to get anyway.

:(
 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,165
524
126
Can't you get DIMES to email them too?

Seems a shame to haves dimes stopped because of a few paranoid ISPs:(

btw anyone seen dringdahl about?
 

BlackMountainCow

Diamond Member
May 28, 2003
5,759
0
0
The problem with my ISP is not that they themselves don't like DIMES, but that they get asked by other clients/customers why my IP is pinging/tracing their networks or servers. My ISP basically said that other people were complaining about me and considering the incoming traffic from my DIMES clients as hostile.

Besides that, as my ISP is a German one, there'd be a language barrier to overcome as well and here in Germany, we have pretty strict laws about "internet crimes." In that respect I'll rather shut down DIMES on my 4 PCs and therefore have no hassle with my ISP, other clients or the German law.

 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,165
524
126
they get asked by other clients/customers why my IP is pinging/tracing their networks or servers. My ISP basically said that other people were complaining about me and considering the incoming traffic from my DIMES clients as hostile.


Now that is concerning!
I see why you have stopped now ,however I'd say its still be worth letting Dimes know about it so they can 'educate' these people so that other Dimes users won't get complained about ,or that the project doesn't get vilified.

************************************************************************
Anyone know what this is about?

I don't if this is just coincidence ,but not long after I started to run Dimes my firewall has registered a few supposedly DoS attacks ,here's the log report

Denial of Service "Smurf" attack detected.
Description:
A Smurf attack occurs when a hacker spoofs your system's IP address and then broadcasts a ping request to several subnets. The resulting deluge of ping responses ties up your system as well as the various network subnets pinged.


Is Sygate being paranoid & mistaking Dimes for being spoofed? ,the log also shows that its 'outgoing' ,or could I be really being attacked?
 

Freewolf

Diamond Member
Feb 15, 2001
9,673
1
81
For what's it worth I'm running Kerio personal firewall and there is nothin in it's log like that.
 

BlackMountainCow

Diamond Member
May 28, 2003
5,759
0
0
@ Assimilator:

I asked my ISP to disclose what folks/company/client complained about me, but they said that they can't tell me because of data personal info / data protection. :confused: I guess I'll just leave it as it is and am happy that my ISP warned me before letting the other clients take any legal action against me.

For your "spoof" problem. I also use Sygate and all the time I ran DIMES I got "spoofed" about 10 times a day. Never before and never after I stoped. So yes, that definitely has to do with DIMES. I mean, if you think about it. I guess a Trojan or Mass Mailer wouldn't do much else than what DIMES is doing, at least looked upon from the mere network action.
 

Smoke

Distributed Computing Elite Member
Jan 3, 2001
12,650
207
106
I wonder if the following has anything to do with it?

A new DIMES update will be released today. V.0.4.2 includes many bug fixes and several new features: Better graph presentation, new GUI tools (zoom, damping, auto clear) and a new tab which provides the users with powerful tools to measure to list of IPs/URLs. If you have an installed agent, you will receive in the next few days a pop-up when you open the DIMES window which asks you to OK the update. From there everything is done automatically.

I saw something pop up momentarily on my main workstation this morning but it disappeared before I could react.
 

BlackMountainCow

Diamond Member
May 28, 2003
5,759
0
0
Originally posted by: Smoke
I wonder if the following has anything to do with it?

A new DIMES update will be released today. V.0.4.2 includes many bug fixes and several new features: Better graph presentation, new GUI tools (zoom, damping, auto clear) and a new tab which provides the users with powerful tools to measure to list of IPs/URLs. If you have an installed agent, you will receive in the next few days a pop-up when you open the DIMES window which asks you to OK the update. From there everything is done automatically.

I saw something pop up momentarily on my main workstation this morning but it disappeared before I could react.

IIRC that "news" item has been there for the last three weeks or so, it's actually old news, but the "today" part is misleading.
 

rise

Diamond Member
Dec 13, 2004
9,116
46
91
who's that blank team that is always around us in the standings?
 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,165
524
126
Thanks freewolf about the stats ,I wondered too

Originally posted by: BlackMountainCow
@ Assimilator:

I asked my ISP to disclose what folks/company/client complained about me, but they said that they can't tell me because of data personal info / data protection. :confused: I guess I'll just leave it as it is and am happy that my ISP warned me before letting the other clients take any legal action against me.

For your "spoof" problem. I also use Sygate and all the time I ran DIMES I got "spoofed" about 10 times a day. Never before and never after I stoped. So yes, that definitely has to do with DIMES. I mean, if you think about it. I guess a Trojan or Mass Mailer wouldn't do much else than what DIMES is doing, at least looked upon from the mere network action.

Fair enough ,I'll just ignore it then;)

Re ISP clients ,they wouldn't have a leg to stand on to take legal action.
But fair enough that you want to avoid the hassle in the 1st place ;)
However its still worth informing Dimes so they know what their client(program) is being accused of.

 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,165
524
126
Originally posted by: RaySun2Be
I've had to shut it down on the cruncher I was running it on, seems to be interfering with remote access (UltraVNC with encryption). :(

I'll see if I can find another cruncher to install it on.

Any luck Ray?
I passed you a little while ,not gonna let me run off with your kane are you? ;)

 

caferace

Golden Member
May 31, 2005
1,472
6
76
Originally posted by: rise4310
who's that blank team that is always around us in the standings?

Individual Dimes-ites who are not affiliated with a team.

-jim

 
Aug 27, 2002
10,043
2
0
I just signed up with 1 cruncher and I seem to be in the top 10 daily producers of TA already.....Don't know if that's a good thing or not. :p
 

Smoke

Distributed Computing Elite Member
Jan 3, 2001
12,650
207
106
Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
I just signed up with 1 cruncher and I seem to be in the top 10 daily producers of TA already.....Don't know if that's a good thing or not. :p

One "cruncher" and you are in the Top Ten! :Q

No, that is not a good sign at all. :(
 

Assimilator1

Elite Member
Nov 4, 1999
24,165
524
126
Originally posted by: lobadobadingdong
I just signed up with 1 cruncher and I seem to be in the top 10 daily producers of TA already.....Don't know if that's a good thing or not. :p

Where do you get 'daily production' stats from?

(Not this post Ray ;))
 

RaySun2Be

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
16,565
6
71
Originally posted by: Assimilator1
Originally posted by: RaySun2Be
I've had to shut it down on the cruncher I was running it on, seems to be interfering with remote access (UltraVNC with encryption). :(

I'll see if I can find another cruncher to install it on.

Any luck Ray?
I passed you a little while ,not gonna let me run off with your kane are you? ;)


That cane's going to be pretty hard to steal, seeing is how the cane is now an cyborg implant due to my being assimilated by the Borg Collective. :p