SETI & the risk of downloading a malicious virus from outer space

SETI & the risk of downloading a malicious virus from outer space(io9.com)

13 points by toemetoch 13 years ago | 6 comments

crazygringo 13 years ago |

What? This is the most ridiculous thing I've read in the past month.

Extraterrestrials would have to target specific buffer overflow bugs or something in SETI executable code, which to know about, basically means they're already visiting Earth in UFO's and walking around NASA as spies. And if they're already doing that, I don't think they need to create a computer virus to accomplish their goals.

There's no such thing as a "general" computer virus. Viruses are OS/program-specific.

This article/headline is pure science fiction, and pretty bad fiction at that.

ithkuil 13 years ago | |

Indeed, a better plot would be to use social engineering to let us build the virus/whatever for them:

they send us instructions on how to create some beautiful technology (e.g. a fake superluminar com) which is so obscure and intricate that it hides his real goal: a sophisticated AI which would then study us and plan for next move <put here your evil plan of choice>.

(Variation on the theme of A for Andromeda)

Retric 13 years ago |

If you run the numbers on signal strength there is only a tiny number of stars that are close enough that we could receive anything that was not sent directly to us using a stupidly powerful and tightly focused beam. As in if there where a repeater on the closest star that sent out a 1 to 1 copy of every omnidirectional radio signal from earth we would not be able to hear it.

xutopia 13 years ago |

"What you don't know could kill you?" I'm sorry to see such an article posted here.

adobriyan 13 years ago |

I've personally seen 3 coredumps of one of the SETI executables, so...

phazmatis 13 years ago |

This is what pop culture hacker movies have wraught.