I had a mail inviting me to join this project, (I get several mails a year as the admin for a team). What struck me was the projects goals...

>>>
Surveill@Home is a research project that uses Internet-connected computers to conduct end-to-end fine-grained monitoring of web sites.
The aim of the project is to deploy a large infrastructure to support thousands of probes monitoring the Internet.
Each probe repeatedly performs a pre-defined set of web transactions on web-sites, performing active web monitoring from the last mile.
<<<

... now this maybe be completely innocent etc. but what struck me was the possibility of using BOINC to recruit and deploy a machine base to launch denial of service style web attacks.

---

Wave upon wave of demented avengers march cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream.