Elbox have spoken

[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)

[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 ?  ;-) )

[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.

[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.

[seer]

You mean the fair trial those got you meesed with the driver

Why mess with drivers if you don't know what you're doing ? Like telling a win98 user to open regedit and delete a few keys to see what happens, then blaiming M$ then Win98 is a bad OS (I hate the way the registry is used in any Windows version, but the idea itself isn't so bad... But why does the registry have to contain info about "shortcuts?") . Besides, it's in the EULA that you are not allowed to mess with the drivers. (I know EULA means sh*t, but still)

(maybe just be accident or out of curiosity) ?

Curiosity killed the cat ;-).. If this code is triggered by accident most HDs would still boot I think. Like Elbox said, there isn't any vital info stored in the part of the RDB that gets erased.

No one except the state (and parents  ;-) eh and wifes  :-o)) has the right to punish, and surely not an obscure polnish company.

Neither do the users who either don't own any of the drivers and/or hardware from Elbox, or aren't affected by the (unproven AFAIK) unsave code. The ones who are infected have a right to acuse them, offcourse Elbox will probably want them to prove they didn't mess with their drivers. (User wins ;-))

[seer]

@Electro

I am not aware of any code in windows that deletes your RDB (or whats it called on windows MFT?) but if there is its just the same #### that elbox did and it is by all means illegal.

It's called MBR (master boot record) in windows/MS-DOS.

AFAIK Windows doesn't contain any similar code, tho Win98 and even XP did thrash some of mine RDB's.... Reading Elbox statement, neither does their scheme delete your RDB, just some data on the hardrive type/heads/cylinders. Done that myself a few times when my A4000 was still working, no probs really. HD toolbox just reads them back from the drive without any pain.

[seer]

all you have written is besides the point. elbox (or anyone else for that matter) is not the authority with legal right to mess with your HD. they can sue you if they know you hacked / pirated their stuff but thats all there is to it.

Just try to keep things a little fair. Looks like Elbox is the only bad party here. I'll never trust a anom. Hacker, even if what he said seems to be true for some part.

I do agree that such should never be in any driver or other OS stuff... Mind, I have yet to see from both sides any proof of what the code does or doesn't do. (The "hacker" -> Driver destroys RDB and data when something goes wrong; Elbox -> driver destroys unimportant bit of RDB no data is ever lost.)

[seer]

@Tiger,

You overright the RDB on your boot drive, the computer doesnt boot, how on earth can this be thought of as doing something unimportant.

Read the statement from Elbox, the code doesn't do that (according to Elbox, sorry, can't test this for myself. I would have done that by now if I could. Plenty of HD's here to screw over if need be). Again 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...

I allready commented about this part, so I'm not going to again.

However, like I said no proof from either, both questionable, side, only that said code exists in one form or another...

[seer]

proof

Email the guy if you think the post is a fake.

I know that the code is there, still Chris doesn't say if the code destroyes the RDB or the "only" the RDSK part of the RDB. I doubt Chris is going to risk loosing his valuable data by trying it out, but he is the only creditable source so far to give some answers in this whole debate; there is RDB code inside the driver.

The proof I want; a creditable person stating that he tried to hack said driver and as a result lost all partions and data on his main HD, or that it doesn't do anything worse at all.

 So far, the only thing people showed is some code that does something to the RDB when an uncertain event does something. We don't even know for sure when the code is triggered at all. Send me a working Amiga and a mediator and I will risk one of my old drives for ya :-)..

[seer]

@Tiger

How easy must it be to ommit or ignore this part This first RDB sector, named RDSK, does not contain ANY user data. This sector does not contain ANY information about disk partitioning, either. [/b]

The HD doesn't know about partitions, that's the vital info in the RDB, destroy that and only special tools, not HD-toolbox, can help you. Elbox clearly states this part of the RDB isn't affected.

What elbox describes, wether this is true or not, is that their codes overwrites a part of the RDB called RDSK  in which hardware info is stored, the number of cylinders, numbers of drive heads etc, non vital info to boot the drive. This can be easily restored with HD-toolbox, and AFAIK is not even needed to boot from the drive, or at worse see and use the drive when booting from the WB disk.

Formatting the drive is not going to restore the RDB. IF the RDB is destroyed, use a specialized tool to read the lost partitions on the drive or HD-toolbox to repartition the drive as you can't even format a drive if the vital part of the RDB is destroyed. (How can you format if you don't have partitions ?)

[seer]

@platon42

ThanX, at least some proof.. About ANN, any "troll" can post there, on A.org this is a little more difficult as at least here only one can use a certain nick (Well most of the time.. Sometimes Bobson isn't Bobson  :-P )..

Still, I did do awfull stuff to the RDB just for "fun" but never had the problems you described when destroying only the drivetype info that "should" reside in the RDSK.. Then again, I only did that on FFS drives, never did it when I got SFS or on a ZIP disk and hardly used HD-toolbox for the "advanced" stuff . Is it possible there are some diffrences on a ZIP RDB ? (Willing to risk your real IDE HD :-D;-))

Strange that your SFS partition was bey bey.. I know the filesystem is written to the RDB, but I thought it wasn't anywhere "near" the RDSK ?

Is this enough for a proof?

Would be better if you had a higher post count
  ;-)  or if it came from Redrumloa, Kronos or Coder, but your post does give some good details to give sme credit. You know, it's not like the average "I did it" or "my source told me" type of posting without any backing of facts.

Read the whole thread on ann.lu. There are a few people who have actually
triggered the code by a programm 'accidentially' overwriting one byte in
the driver.

Like I said, ANN poster could be anyone. If I saw a post there from say Red, I take it with a grain of salt. If I see it here, I know almost 100% for sure it's Red.

Offcourse I could still say; you didn't use the driver and some hacking, just some self editing of the RDB but I'll let this pass by  :-D

[seer]

Umm..actually that is Chris Hodges who wrote the Poseidon stack which the Spider uses....

Well... Yes, it does say so in the signature, but with "only 7" post it's a little hard to give him that real credit. I do take his word that this is the real Chris Hodges (Edit:Tho I could email him offcourse, just noticed the Email addy), and if you are backing his / this post as comming from Chris then I'll take you're word for it. You have proven yourself as a reliable poster.

Anyway, that maybe one of the biggest problem of the Internet. Anybody can claim to be or know anybody, and it's hard to proof it either way. That's why I asked all the question about this in the first place anyway. No real proof from a reliable source (untill now hopefully)..

[seer]

LOL I see my name mentioned alot in your post, I am sooo flattered

You're welcome. But with close to 2500 posts, I think we can safely say you are one of the better known A-Orgers here...

[seer]

@platon42

Sigh. You rather believe Elbox with their "facts", which again obviously are *wrong* again.

Like I said, neither party suplied any proof that what they said was true, that means that neither the original poster nor Elbox gave any proof.  YOU came with some thought out facts, something the original poster didn't (IMO) and Elbox still hasn't done (proof that their code doesn't render the HD unusable).

instead of repeatedly posting their statements as dogmatic truth?

I didn't. I just tried to explain how they see it as it seemed that their statement or parts of it were ignored just as many (parts of) statements made bij EG Amiga or Thendic are ignorred as it suits anybody who is against them (or for them).

How did you do this? With a disk monitor? Or with
HDToolbox?

Don't really remember, only that it was a beta or something but it wasn't called a disk monitor but a HD editor. Been about 6 years ago since I played  with the RDB.

 I also used a program a friend of mine developed but he never gave it to anybody except his friends (Was called LeDisk, but I doubt it still exists in any form, it was a real good thing to (ab)use. Allas he died 3 years ago, his family threw out most of his disk soon after he was cremated. At the time I didn't find it important to keep those disks myself. All other friends sold their miggy stuff eons ago) I must admit that I could be mistaken about only destroying the drivetype info tho. It's been far to long to remember.

>Is it possible there are some diffrences on a ZIP RDB ? (Willing to risk your real IDE HD )

No, there is NO difference.

Ok, thanx for the info. (Never used a zip on an Amiga)

>Would be better if you had a higher post count

Now, excuse me, that's stupid. You really think that if this account was faked, the "real" Chris Hodges wouldn't immediately cry out and tell Wayne that there's a fake account of him?

It's not that. AFAIK, I never spoken with you before, so I don't know you. If you had more posts (and if I read them offcourse) I could make a judgement on wheter I would just take your word for it or not. People like Coder, Redrumloa Kronos have a somewhat high post count and everybody here knows them and in a way how they think about certain thinks.

>Offcourse I could still say; you didn't use the driver and some hacking, just some self editing of the RDB but I'll let this pass by

I really cannot help you then. I'll give it up. Believe whatever is easier for you to believe.

It wasn't meant as an offensive. Like I said, you are the only one who posted (again, AFAIK) reliable info on a (IMHO) reliable website, unlike the postings on ANN (Don't read Moonbunny) where anybody can claim to be you or post stuff like "believe me, I know" without any facts or arguments.

But to conclude. If you say the RDB is thrashed after the Elbox code is triggered then I'll take your word for it. Enough typed about this I think.

On a different but not OT note; are you giving Elbox the rights back to distribute your software now they claim the offensive code is taken out ?

[seer]

@Bobson

I dont get what you mean?  :-)

Sometimes you are at Axemans (Not sure I got the name rigth) place and you post with his account or vice versa by mistake :-). Always good for a laugh ;-)