Elbox have spoken

[xeron]

They claim they didn't do anything wrong, and offer no apologies, however they say the RDB stuff is now removed:

"Our fully legal anti-piracy safeguard lost its purpose when information about it was spread among crackers. Therefore, its code has been removed from all our drivers to Mediator and Spider, and all registered users have received appropriate updates."

Full article

[Balti]

Thank God that I don't have that stuff in my miggy !!

[odin]

So it was true!!!  :-o

I thought it was just some arse spewing mud again on ANN.


Elbox seems to be preparing for war, they have their own airforce (top righthand corner). ;-)

[Elektro]

I really hope they go out of business and go live under some bridge... bastards deserve this..

[jumpship]

 :-o

I have to admit I am surprised! OK maybe wrting to that part of the hard disk isn't "dangerous" but what if the "protection" code was activated by a thrid party, hacker or virus?

Very dangerous peice of code to have in a leigit bit of software IMHO

[seer]

Hmmmm... You all read the entire article ? (Doesn't get them out of the woods, but it does sound more like the whole situation is overrated)

[Zadoc]

Personally, I think this whole ordeal is just crap.  Some hacker attempts to crack the usb.device driver, gets his RDB ruined and tries to blame Elbox.

I had no fear over my Mediator killing my harddrive as I am not doing anything illegal, and since I have switched to PFS3 I have not corrupted any executables on my harddrive.

I do understand the concern that legal Mediator users have/had over this ordeal, but I personally think this has all been blown way out of proportion.

I'm sure there will still be a bunch of people slagging Elbox even after this explanation and new drivers without the RDB trashing anti-piracy code.

[Balti]

@seer

Yes I have read  the whole thing, and I'm even more annoyed by
the allegations the spread out against competition products.

(E3B being the target this time, but it's not the first of those)

[Elektro]

What really matters here is the fact that elbox seem to think they have the (legal?) right to mess with your hd. This is of course bull. its simply illegal. imagine if M$ or some company like that was caught doing this...

[seer]

I guess part of the problem is that lots of users know the acronym (sp ?) RDB and don't like to read "overwrite" and RDB in the same sentence. So when (non-)programmers see some code containing these words all hell breaks lose..

From Elbox;

RDB FACTS

How does it relate to the cracked USB driver in question? The only result of activation of the anti-piracy safeguard in the cracked code is overwriting the first RDB sector of the booting hard disk. This first RDB sector, named RDSK, does not contain ANY user data. This sector does not contain ANY information about disk partitioning, either. What is stored in this sector is only information about the model and parameters of the hard disk and technical information available in another part of the RDB. When the RDSK sector content is overwritten, recovering is quite simple. No backup copies of this RDB sector are necessary. All the information to be included in the RDSK sector can be read from the hard disk with HDToolBox software, even if this sector is completely overwritten. The five minutes of work needed to restore the RDSK sector does not seem to be a heavy punishment for stealing and/or cracking software...


Sounds plausible to me I guess.. Then again 5 minutes downtime of any computer can be real costly in some bussineses.. Not everybody knows how to use HD-Toolbox ;-)... It's debatable if this code would never have been triggered in "normal" use. (Like a virus designed to take advantage of this code, then again, why would anyone write a virus that only works if a certain driver is available ?  ;-) )

[jtsiren]

What was very worrying, though, was the fact that Elbox did threaten ANN.lu's Christian Kemp with legal action and wanted him to remove any discussion of this matter. That was unacceptable considering that fact that they now admit that these "protection measures" did exist. And Christian, a long-time community supporter, does not deserve that treatment!

What ever happened to the good old "We made a mistake. We're sorry. Here's a fix." in this Amiga community of ours... Really, do companies think they get more goodwill out of people buy denying things and trying to hide the truth behind word games? Elbox are not the only one to try this.

I for one will pay for honesty any time over deception. We all make mistakes. Admitting and making up for it is where the difference is made.

I'm so disappointed.

[seer]

imagine if M$ or some company like that was caught doing this...

Hmmm... Wasn't there some news about their EULA that if M$ found illegal software/MP3 on your Windows PC the could delete those files ? (Maybe WinXP-MC stuff ?). Even if they did, Joe Average would just happily continue to use Win98 for years to come. It's not just Amiga followers you can call Sheep y' know.

[Zadoc]

@Balti

I'm even more annoyed by
the allegations the spread out against competition products.

(E3B being the target this time, but it's not the first of those)

Well, it's hard to really judge evils based on where your perspective is on this issue, but Chris Hodges (Poseidon author) illegally obtained Elbox drivers and championed the campaign against Elbox in public forums.  While I fully understand those who LEGALLY owned Mediator drivers and verified the RDB problem themselves, the fact is that I think Mr. Hodge's behaviour was rather unwarranted.

[xeron]

Zadoc wrote:
While I fully understand those who LEGALLY owned Mediator drivers and verified the RDB problem themselves, the fact is that I think Mr. Hodge's behaviour was rather unwarranted.

Whoa! So the author of the USB stack that Elbox wrote some drivers for hears that those very same drivers could have malicious code in it is wrong for investigating the claims that could have very serious consequences for both Elbox and himself? I don't see your logic...

[seer]

What was very worrying, though, was the fact that Elbox did threaten ANN.lu's Christian Kemp with legal action and wanted him to remove any discussion of this matter.

Could have something to do with the reputation ANN has these days (sorry Chris, it's just not what it used to be :-( , I know you chose not to introduce registered posters, but..)... No company would like to see a whole thread on a news page with negative comments based on some news from a rather unreliable source..

I for one will pay for honesty any time over deception. We all make mistakes. Admitting and making up for it is where the difference is made.

But Elbox don't believe the made a mistake... They say they are a victim here to.  Funny thing is, on ANN they call Elbox Judge Dredd because they think Elbox is playing personal police  judge and jury... Whatever happened to the right to defend yourself  ;-) , or fair trial ?

Anyway, I still think this is lots of hot air 'bout air. I don;t own any Elbox products, I don't care about them, but every story can be rread from multiple angles.