"thing, but indirect consequences may be quite another. How does one know for sure what mighthave happened had the covert exploitation not been ongoing, or what might have been precludedby its presence? In an interview with one of the parasitic project authors, reported in the Sept. 6,2001, issue of Security Wire Digest, Vincent Freeh said this about that: “It's sort of like meetinga friend and leaving one car in a shopping center parking lot. You've used the facilities in anunintended way that doesn't benefit the provider of the parking lot--most people wouldn'tconsider that unethical. But if you bring in a fleet of cars, impacting people who come to dobusiness at the store, I think that's unethical”How it uses remote computers without authorization?These imperatives, adapted from Barquin?s Commandments 2 and 7, potentially pose the mostserious ethical challenges for parasitic computing and also highlight the ethical “gray area”associated with this matter. Parasitic computing does not appear to us in any way to be a form ofinvasive “hacking.” We thus agree with the authors? contention that “unlike „cracking? (breakinginto a computer) or computer viruses, however, parasitic computing does not compromise thesecurity of the targeted servers…” (Barabasi et al., 2001, p. 895). Clearly, there was no“snooping,” data corruption, or even residue (back doors, etc.) as a result of their implementationof parasitic computing. Moreover, it is important to emphasize that lack of “awareness” is notnecessarily the same thing as lack of authorization.ADAVATAGES OF PARASITIC COMPUTING? Parasitic computing does not require the willingness of any target machine.? It does not cause any harm to remote computers.? It can very easily solve complex problems.? It solves the sat problems very easily. 16 DISADVANTAGES OF PARASITIC COMPUTING? Several computational cycles are taken to process the possible solutions.? Ethical dilemma.? Almost impossible to prevent someone from running a parasitic job on your server.? Removing or changing the exploited functions would cause the server to be unable tocommunicate on the internet.? Delays due to processing parasitic messages could cause the denial of service.CONCLUSIONThe demonstration of parasitic computing by Barabasi et al. (2001) has provided us withan interesting and provocative example of how many computers can be recruited to worktogether in pursuit of solutions to complex problems even when the respectiveparticipants are unaware of their involvement. How is one to evaluate the ethics ofparasitic computing? Even the researchers involved seem to differ among themselves onthis question. Judging by their published remarks, Vincent Freeh and Jay Brockman do 17 not find ethical problems with the covert exploitation involved in their demonstration ofparasitic computing. In contrast, when asked the question "Was it ethical?" in a NationalPublic Radio interview, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi replied: "That's a very good question. Mythinking [is] that it is not. And that was one of the reasons actually why we haven't reallypushed much further" (National Public Radio,2001). Such disagreement among principalsis vivid testimony to the above-noted ethical “gray area” associated with parasiticcomputing, an area which we think calls for ongoing examination and debate.REFERENCES1) A.-L. Barab´asi, V. W. Freeh, H. Jeong and J. B. Brockman, “Parasitic computing,” Nature,vol. 412, pp. 894-897, August 2002.2) Barger N. Robert & Crowell R. Charles,The ethics of Parasitic Computing, Sept 2003 :www.nd.edu/~ccrowell/Parasitic%20Computing.pdf.3) Layers of the TCP/IP protocol. Adapted from Stevens, W. R. (1994). TCP/IPIllustrated, Volume 1. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,4) Barabasi et.al. Supplement material for Parasitic Computing http://www.nd.edu/~parasite/ 18 "