The place to change a password is at the Sign In Manager where a member can also define his Password Recovery options . Because BOINC Account Manager (BAM/AMS) are not allowed to write to the WCG member and device profiles, any changes have to be done at the website "My Grid " section.

The permitted password characters are determined by WCG and meet the IBM security standards v.v. the operation of Client, where it is the Client *always* initiating the contact with the WCG servers. The criteria to meet are:

• The minimum length is 6 characters and maximum is 15.
  
• Allowed are: Alphanumeric: A-Z, a-z, 0-9
  
• Not Allowed are: "special" characters (!@#$%^&*_+=:;, etc...)

Any attempted breaches would get automatically signaled to IBM's security group! For more information on passwords refer to Help.

WCG has implemented secure, 256 bit, secure communication (https/SSL) to ensure a trusted environment is created for the members. No other BOINC project is known to use this level of encryption in Grid Agent interaction.


Whilst WCG is more flexible in allowing special characters in registering member names, the restriction being 30 characters due limit of the forum software, present BOINC versions will not accept some of those when attaching the client manually to http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org. When this happens there are 4 workarounds available.

• Probably the least painful is to temporarily change the member name to a regular character form from e.g. Joe Doé to Joe Doe in the My Grid > My Profile page. Save that and perform the attach new project with the temporary name. After attaching to WCG, go back to the My Profile page and set the name back to Joe Doé.
  
  
• Obtain the WCG BOINC installer package at it's download page. It will attach automatically without the need of entering member name and password. It will use instead the pre-assigned BOINC account key, a 32 hex number looking like 0ff891ada57e5c375d678076e123f180, which can be found on the My Grid > My Profile page. Make sure to be signed in at WCG for it to be able to collect the account key.
  
  Note!: If the version number of BOINC as provided by WCG is lower, an un-install has to be performed first to prevent future upgrade/downgrade problems.
  
  
• When coming from another project and unable to attach due to the special character factor, obtain the account key 32 hex number, see point 2, stop/exit BOINC and use the BOINC command line tool. To do so, open a command window (DOS window in MS speak), go to the BOINC program directory and enter:
  
  boinc --attach_project http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org account key
  
  (Substituting the account key part with the 32 hex value!)
  
  
• Manually create the account_www.worldcommunitygrid.org.xml file in the BOINC program directory. Steps to take are:
  
  
  • Find the BOINC Account Key, point 2 above.
    
  • Exit BOINC, including the Core Client process
    
  • Open up an ASCII text editor like Notepad or other PLAIN TEXT editor and type the following substituting account key part between the authenticator tags with the 32 hex number found in point 1. above.
    

    <account>
       <master_url>http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/</master_url>
       <authenticator>account key</authenticator>
    </account>

  • Save it as account_www.worldcommunitygrid.org.xml making sure it doesn't suffix .txt extenstion.
    
  • Save or move the new file to the BOINC program directory.
    
  • Restart BOINC.

All things should be set now using whatever solution felt most comfortable with.