SETI@home virus info

"November 14, 2003

Over the past few weeks we've been getting reports from users who found unauthorized installations of SETI@home on their systems. In one case, a user found a Windows command line client running under the name "CPUIdle" in the directory:

D:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\CPUIDLE

It should be made clear that this is not due to a security flaw in SETI@home itself, but a flaw in your system that allows viruses to infiltrate and install our software. In the past, known worms were distributed around the internet that infected systems, causing them to download SETI@home and execute it. One user claimed that they got infected this time over an IRC channel.

Unfortunately, at this time we don't know much about the worm/virus which may be doing this. If you have any clues, please pass them along to us. We'll update this web page as we gather more information. "

http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/virus.html