Strike while the iron is hot

[anon]

Today, we'd like to once again present the biggest problem for our coders' productivity. Currently, new mods are released as never before, even more than in the past at other boards. In addition, there are many other, unique ongoing projects of the highest quality. Until now this is all good, and for our mods' actual users, a whole advantage.

Almost half a year ago, we decided to disable the so-called "credit system", as it makes little sense to force someone to write something, only to then be able to download our mods. This method has gone outdated, so we removed it from our forum. Since then, the downloads amount has of course increased significantly, and the posts one slightly decreased.

But let's go back to our main problem. As it always happens, there are people who are jealous or simply envious of our great work, and simply want to hurt us and take the biggest slice of the pie. That's of course understandable, as we can with a little pride say we are the worldwide #1 board with such an unique, straightforward offer.

We have many times used the time where we'd usually meet up with our friends, or earn money, to invest it in this forum. SB-Innovation has become somewhat more developed, which is increasingly time-consuming. Every new project requires hundreds of hours of work, but we take the needed time and patience for new inventions. We do this for you, not for us.

There is a site (whose name is irrelevant) which doesn't respect our work, mocks us, and releases our products as theirs. Of course this fact alone doesn't matter to us, partly because we're not at such a low level - we simply don't need it. However, his page only exists to monetarily profit from our work, so it's our exact opposite.

In recent weeks we have had a huge decline in our amount of visitors, which makes us lack the advertising revenue we urgently need to pay our server. Also, our public image risks getting damaged if copies of our programs going by different names, to the point of being unrecognizable, keep on appearing and circulating around the net. (Although this somehow flatters us, as it'd mean our work is so good that attempting to copy it is the only alternative.)

The people behind this site effectively don't seem to know what they're doing. Without us there would be no new mods, without new mods there would be no money, and without money they'd have to either close the site or post only bad 0-day tools and other unneeded things.

Given this situation, it won't be long until we take the first steps against mod stealing. Maybe we'll have to stop releasing mods forever (at least for the public sector), or close registration and switch to an "invite only" system.

Reality is, in that case we'd be certainly taking a step backwards, which we can't accept. This article is only to inform our users, and everyone else that's interested, about our situation, and possible changes to our site to stop the mod stealing.

On this note, have a nice weekend and think about what many of you take for granted but what actually isn't.

The SB-Innovation Team

[anon]

I realize sharing the mods is important with the public, though what does one do to prevent the illegitimate use of another's mods and tools with out permission??

We have been protecting the Mods' EXEs so far, but as you may have seen, s****4 found a way to unpack them, and hex-edited them so that it looks like we coded the mods for him.

[SealLion]

So now what??

[hitman]

So now what??

now we need to think about a new solution

[SealLion]

I have an idea:

enter into discussions with him re: a degree of cooperation with this board and his.
This might seem promising if taken in the right direction, yes??

Nevertheless, failing that, I have a stash of radio-actively infused nuclear missiles that I'm willing to give to a 'fair cause'. Yes. They are 'infused', rather than constructed with radio-active material. You see.....: Liquid can kill.
Can you just imagine the screaming??

Failing the use of that, I have here a secret contractual agreement with the Russian secret police that they will go after anyone that is in...... disagreement...... with me.

Failing the follow-through of that contract, I have an agreement with the Mafioso that they'll.......'take-care' ........of anyone that happens to........'bug' me.

Failing that, I have here a stash of film and documents that exposes the 'adverse sexual preferences' of him.

and that would be it. So take your pick.

[anon]

I have an idea:

enter into discussions with him re: a degree of cooperation with this board and his.
This might seem promising if taken in the right direction, yes??

That doesn't work, either.

Nevertheless, failing that, I have a stash of radio-actively infused nuclear missiles that I'm willing to give to a 'fair cause'. Yes. They are 'infused', rather than constructed with radio-active material. You see.....: Liquid can kill.
Can you just imagine the screaming??

Failing the use of that, I have here a secret contractual agreement with the Russian secret police that they will go after anyone that is in...... disagreement...... with me.

Failing the follow-through of that contract, I have an agreement with the Mafioso that they'll.......'take-care' ........of anyone that happens to........'bug' me.

Failing that, I have here a stash of film and documents that exposes the 'adverse sexual preferences' of him.

and that would be it. So take your pick.

We may have to resort to those, so ready up whatever tools you may need to get in touch with your contacts.

[vDD+wR]

Nevertheless, failing that, I have a stash of radio-actively infused nuclear missiles that I'm willing to give to a 'fair cause'. Yes. They are 'infused', rather than constructed with radio-active material. You see.....: Liquid can kill.
Can you just imagine the screaming??
Failing the use of that, I have here a secret contractual agreement with the Russian secret police that they will go after anyone that is in...... disagreement...... with me.
Failing the follow-through of that contract, I have an agreement with the Mafioso that they'll.......'take-care' ........of anyone that happens to........'bug' me.
Failing that, I have here a stash of film and documents that exposes the 'adverse sexual preferences' of him.

Sometimes, I really think your imagination runs riot!
But it's good to see that SB-I has contacts to more "convincing" solutions.

a degree of cooperation with this board and his.

I would dismiss the idea, since this offer would appear to him as a desperate move for us to end this and like an abandon of our board...
Let's hope we'll find another way to solve this damn problem!

greetz vDD

[anon]

I would dismiss the idea, since this offer would appear to him as a desperate move for us to end this and like an abandon of our board...

That's correct. And as said in the first post, we don't need to take ourselves down to his level...

Plus I know from my past experiences that trying to "make peace" with these kind of people never works.

[Tinkle]

well i am just a newbie and i also know that i am not tht great to comment on this bt still
my view is to create a simple application which wud be must download for users
when a user downloads the rar file of the mod application dont give him the password
bt instead make him open through tht application dedicated to sb-innovation
this hides the password frm the user and also the application b4 supplying password it checks his creadit points in the site
and also change the criteria to gain credit point
a user gains credit points on proper advice
he gains credit points if he creates a thread thts useful or funny or kinda helps increase interactivity between members
and yes most importantly one word or one smiley post shudnt be counted in for gaining points
also create polls on front page of home making user tempt to vote and make him find things
from net which he can pass on to us as nice information
also keep a section where user can actually post there applications and make it free so tht u can gain sum funds frm his beta work
thus it helps all
though this is just a suggestion i know u guys r busy and do lot of coding and u r wory is absolutely tru tht p2p is free bt none of these rules wud actually effect p2p it will make user increase intereaction and no need to wory about password being taken away
so everybody wins
and ya do reply abt what u think this is first time i am in sum creative disscussion so excited

[SealLion]

To the staff: I have an idea that may help re: protecting the mods, though I have absolutely no idea if it'll work.

I came across this piece of software while cruising the net.

Here is some brief info:

VMProtect

It is a new generation of software protection. Protected parts of code are executed on a virtual machine which makes it really difficult to analyze and crack the protected software. The built-in disassembler and a MAP file allow you to quickly select the necessary parts of the code protected against cracking.
Supported compilers:

* Delphi
* Borland C Builder
* Visual C/C++
* Visual Basic (native)
* Virtual Pascal

Supported formats (x32 and x64):

* EXE
* DLL
* BPL
* OCX
* SYS

Supported operating systems:

* Windows 95/98/ME
* Windows NT
* Windows 2000
* Windows XP
* Windows 2003
* Windows Vista

Don't even know if its intended to protect other software, though by the sounds of it, perhaps.

LInk:

VMProtect - New-generation software protection! :: Products

PM me if you'd want additional web-link info {you know what I mean}

[vDD+wR]

Hey man first of all, you have quite good ideas so far!
Mainly you're saying that an application has to be used in order to be able to extract the MODs from the .RAR files.
I don't know whether its easy or not to create such an application and if it would be possible, how hard would it be to crack that system?? (I hope its hard enough )

On your other idea i can agree too. But changing the criteria for gaining CP could be very difficult to realize, actually. Maybe a Mod, should reply to this suggestion, if the board software can be customized in that way!
The only problem, i see atm, could be that those sections where you arent suppposed to get CP's might suffer of inactivity.
Those were my few thoughts on that.

greetz vDD

EDIT: Hey SL, iI see you were a bit faster in typing. If it would be possible to use VMProtect, then maybe the two methods could be combined. So an app could be created thats might be protected with VMP.

[SealLion]

Ya. I liked Austin's idea too. I think he's got an interesting idea there as well.

[Tinkle]

well if that idea is difficult to implement i think we can opt for little measure called as sign to use
well u guys must be aware of clients like garena which r used for playing online games now here is the real deal ppl can get shu mod frm other sites bt how abt if they cant use them
well my idea is if u guys have created shu mod or other mods it wont be difficult to embed a small code which make it compulsory to signup here b4 using and to go little edge in this as an update we can create a client which saves a log file time to time tht log file will be used to check the activity of the respective user when ever a user uses one of SBI,s mods the client created by sbi which was downloaded by user will check for update a namesake update it will check whther he has been active ly using his account in SBI or not
if ans is not account is automatically pruned

so in short it doesnt matter where u take mods from u must come here to register use and contribute
coz if u register and dont contribute and client states tht u dont use accoutn regularly pruning is automatic thus making user little scared and responsible towards product of sb mods

but in both cases creating a client will be important its not necessary tht client luk gud bt surely it is must tht it cant be tweaked

the approach is exactly followed by sum antivirus companies to keep check on the genuines of keys tht ppl use to activate software only difference if we use it we use it in a little low profile manner bt proving more effective

[anon]

@austin414: first of all, it doesn't matter if you're "not that great to comment on this". That isn't true, because everyone's ideas are welcome.

If I understand correctly, you're talking about not giving users the password directly, but making them unpack and use them through a kind of "launcher", which before doing the former, will check how many credits the user has at SB-I before proceeding, right?

(We have had a similar credit system in the past - basically it's still there, but it doesn't cost anything to download attachments. Users gained 1 credit for every 2 posts or thread, and 2 credits for receiving a positive rep. Every attachment costed 2 credits. This system has been removed, because it didn't make too much sense to force someone to post to then download our mods.)

I was reminded a bit of Valve's Steam, where you have to log in to the service first to be able to play the games. Where they were unpacked to wasn't a secret, because trying to run their EXEs directly would result in Steam running first, and asking you to log in. You couldn't play if you were not logged in. (Although some time after that, Steam "emulators" that would allow you to play the games without having the program installed at all appeared...)

Regarding pruning inactive users, I think we shouldn't do that until some years have passed, at least...

My opinion is that your method may work if it was well-implemented, and we got a dedicated login server just for it. In the other hand, checking how many CPs a user has before giving him access to some of the mod's features, or the mods at all, would essentially be re-introducing the credit system - and as I said before, it makes little sense to force people to post. But the launcher idea itself is nice, because this mod stealer couldn't publish SB-I's launcher in his site, as you'd need to be a SB-I member to log in to it, and also couldn't post the unpacked mods alone, as if the system was implemented like Steam's, they'd still need you to log in. And as this idiot has no coding/cracking skills (he's just a script kiddie with access to unpackers), there'd be no way for him to get around it.

@SealLion: VMProtect is already crackable

[czullo]

I just want to L33H please don't kick me from this board I have no money but i can spam spam spam

But seriously, it could be great to clean out database, i can bet that is a lot of empty accounts witch only stealing mods, second thing it could be good to some fresh mods like utorrent 1.9 premiere will be only for Premium ( or whatever it call ) users ( but please let me in ) and after couple of days(weeks) it will be accessible to other users so seba or 00de will get it sooo later Better smaller and good community than large CHEAT SPAM and PSYHOPATH community Regards to Admins, Coders and Mods for all eford you take in this board.

[anon]

second thing it could be good to some fresh mods like utorrent 1.9 premiere will be only for Premium ( or whatever it call ) users ( but please let me in ) and after couple of days(weeks) it will be accessible to other users so seba or 00de will get it sooo later

I think that alone would make no difference - the "premium users" you mention would get the mods before anyone else does, but when they're released to the public, it'd be as easy as it is now to steal them...