What all of these posts bring up for me now is potential abuse of the system.....

Whats to prevent someone from creating a Boinc project in alpha who has invitation to friends only ,from granting 1m credits for lets say 10 minutes work?

Who is going to stop them? Sounds like abuse is almost encouraged. That might shut down NSF funding faster.

We have already had numerous complaints about too high of credit from legitamit projects.... I fear this and subversive projects are the next thread we are all going to be posting about and reading ..... We will see how much abuse Boinc can handle.This thread has brought to light just how vulnerable Boinc is to nefarious intent

I'd guess that boinc itself as a platform is rock-solid. The first thing Berkeley always takes account of is security.

As far as boinc projects are concerned, the best protection against abuse is the constant vigilance of admins, mods and crunchers. Plus the fact that there are multiple communication channels. The open structure means there are risks and vulnerabilities, but it also gives rise to many strengths.

I don't think NSF give a f*** about such irrelevant stuff as credits, they are just an add-on for the fun.
As long as BOINC itself is runing fine, delivering useful results for worthy projects, and and has only few and mostly harmless, because fast spotted and outed, black sheep like eternity and shoft, they can't really complain.
Berkeley is not the superpower to oversee all projects, and that is just fine.

You don't need work at all, just edit the database manually to add credits. Hell, you don't need a PROJECT at all, just create the "exported XML stats" manually.

Thing is, no stats site on the world would add such a project!

I actually read this whole thread this afternoon. I don't understand what all the fuss is about. To me, it boils down to this:

1) BOINC is public domain, anyone can create a project with it.
2) No one forces anyone to run a given project. You choose what you run.
3) If a project describes faithfully what it's supposed to be doing, rational people can make their own rational decisions about the merits of running the project.
3a) People may disagree about the relative merits of a given project.
4) If you don't like the project don't run it.
5) Don't spoil others fun.

It's like, to me, Howard Stern on the radio. If you don't like his show, don't listen, but don't take away the choice for others to listen if they choose. We are all, mostly, grown-ups. We can make up our own mind. We don't need others to restrict our access.