Poseidon USB Stack : Hazardous to your Amiga's Health

[ascadol]

Hi,
I wish to make all Amiga users aware of a potential problem with Poseidon that could be potentially detrimental to your Amiga's HardDisk.

This is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black, or in modern terms hypocrisy with an added dajavue.

You don't have to take my word for it look for yourself with a hex editor inside poseidon.library.

If you look say at Offset 704

You see the following written statement.

"Lame cracking attempt detected RDB has been formatted in Elbox manner."

So am I correct in presuming that the Poseidon USB stack contains code which can damage the Amiga Harddisk contents and thus inflict criminal damage?

If this is just a mere threat with no substance I would seriously consider if you trust this bit of software and its author. As he prepared to merely jest at the potential damage he could inflict upon you.

If it is not an idle threat and has some substance Amiga users using any USB hardware and Poseidon stack please beware.

What would happen if a part of the stack or even poseidon.library would become corrupt. Would it misinterpretate this as a cracking attempt and hose your entire harddrive?

Validation errors and cross link files can occur very easily with the Amiga's. This could corrupt part of the stack and trigger its detrimental payload.

You could have a harddrive fault or transfer problem and the stack could be damaged in such a way it could damage your hard disk.

Or heaven forbid. A virus could specifically target the poseidon.library either deliberately or as a result of an infection and your harddrive gets hosed.

Do Amiga uses seriously want to take risks with your data and this software?

Has poseidon.library really potentially turned out to be poison.library?

A deadly chalice sipped with care.

How many people with USB hardware and the Poseidon stack have potentially already lost harddisk and partition information mysteriously?

[weirdami]

I think people already knew about that from a long while ago. What hidden secrets in that library were you hoping to discover when you found that?

[adolescent]

I'm pretty sure it's just a joke.   :lol:

[zyphoid]

truthfully, i have no problem with a dicent programmer safe guarding his his product from piracy!  We dont have a huge array of programmers who continue to strive to get our platform into the 21century to begin with and secondly, most are not paid what the software is worth.  If I had a break through program which performed as those on pc's (lets say internet phone since that isn't on the amiga yet.... i think) then i have no problem making it shareware to keep our system going, but be honest, don't include it,change, or modify it then pass it as your own in a soft or hardware package, without my consent!  Especially if your were a large cooperation  

[koaftder]

Oh, wow, thanks, never heard about this before.  :roll:

[voxel]

Sure it's a joke :-)

Poseidon and trident are full of jokes and statements that appears on some occasions, April fools day, chris anniversary, January first, christmas day, etc... or just never appears, just to make mad some malintentionned people ;-)

That's a common play by programmers :-) even the Amiga roms are full of this.

[Zac67]

Unfortunately that's no joke. In old versions of the Spider USB driver, when you tried to hack the driver and change the PCI IDs to make a generic USB card work, you'd find that the driver had erased the RDB info. It seems Poseidon detects this and tell you before you reboot.

Must people don't actually find this funny, since it endangers your data in case of some malfunction (RAM, memory access) - it has been reported, that this 'function' is not included in newer Mediator drivers any more.

Personally, this issue has disqualified Elbox from me ever buying anything from them.

[platon42]

Ah, so the after some user from the cracking scene publically announced to attempt cracking Poseidon on the Mediator list, others are going to try this too and speak up to spread some more bull_shit?

Looks like you're at least good at using a hex editor :-D

> So am I correct in presuming that the Poseidon USB stack contains code which can damage the Amiga Harddisk contents and thus inflict criminal damage?

No, of course not. That's the Elbox way. Poseidon does not contain any harddisk damaging code as this would be illegal.

For those who don't remember 2002 see http://www.ann.lu/detail.cgi?category=forum&file=1036967791.msg and http://www.ann.lu/detail.cgi?category=news&file=1037284738.msg for how Elbox had illegal harddisk trashing code in their softeare.

And Elbox of course denied this: http://www.elbox.com/news_02_11_13a.html
and then accused me of being a cracker, see http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Amiga-Mediator/message/14464

> What would happen if a part of the stack or even poseidon.library would become corrupt. Would it misinterpretate this as a cracking attempt and hose your entire harddrive?

That's exactly what could have happened when using Elbox software. Poseidon does not contain code that would do permanent damage to anything in your system.

So you want to know why this message is there? On 02.11.2003, a cracker posted instructions on how to crack Poseidon on several mailing lists. From the next version of Poseidon, attempts to crack Poseidon in this way would simply output this message (as a joke). The specific byte string to search for according the instructions was planted there and only these bytes are checked for modification.

So, to make it easier for you: No, there are no routines that will jump at you when you try to crack Poseidon, it's not hard either. There are no self-integry checks or such. Just go on and make my day.

Thanks for your dramatized posting, it was good for a laugh. So if somebody would please forward my posting to the Mediator list (or just a link to this posting), so that folks would calm down, it would be appreciated.

Edit:
Overlooked that funny quote here:

> How many people with USB hardware and the Poseidon stack have potentially already lost harddisk and partition information mysteriously?

Heh, you should ask Elbox exactly that question ;-D Ah and thanks for bringing the topic up for those who seemed to have forgotten or never learned about it.

Edit 2: Looks like Elbox, masters of censorship, just closed the Mediator list for public reading, so you cannot read their falsifaction of the(ir) truth anymore.

But here it is again, I still had the message in cache:

ELBOX COMPUTER
 http://www.elbox.com
Krakow, 18 November 2002
[html version: http://www.elbox.com/news_02_11_18b.html]


Elbox against piracy

Dear Users of Elbox products for Amiga computers,

We have seen a number of statements posted in recent days, whose authors devote
their precious time and energy to spreading twisted and untrue information on
Elbox and our products. We are presenting here our official position in
reference to their falsification of the truth.

Elbox is a fully-fledged business entity. We design, develop, produce and sell
hardware and software for Amiga computers. We follow a very fundamental rule in
our business: if we decide to publicise any information, it is already certain,
tested and true. Not always can we write directly what the reader would like to
know (due to trade and marketing secrets, IP confidentiality and the signed NDA
documents), but you always can rely on our information.

To give you a clear picture of the current situation, we have decided to publish
this statement.

SPIDER USB DRIVER CRACKED

The whole affair was initiated by a person who publicly confessed committing a
computer misuse offence. That person admitted that he had cracked one of our
drivers. After illegal obtaining, decrypting, disassembling and modifying of our
driver, the cracker discovered code in the driver, which was part of the
anti-piracy safeguard.

Yes, we use anti-piracy safeguard measures. They are well thought, thoroughly
tested and carefully included in our software and hardware. Obviously enough,
they are completely safe for legal users of our software. Our anti-piracy
safeguards are aimed solely against crackers and people who want to use cracked
software. The disclaimers enclosed with our software openly state that any
modification of our drivers is forbidden. Whoever breaks the law and steals our
intellectual property must be aware of committing an act of illegal nature.

We consider cracking activities as highly condemnable and punishable, yet the
anti-piracy safeguards we use never go beyond the limits of the law in force.
The effects of activating our anti-piracy safeguard measures will NEVER result
in unrecoverable losses: either in hardware or in the data.

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...

RDSK STRING 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.

LEGAL USERS ARE ALWAYS SAFE

Our anti-piracy safeguards are COMPLETELY safe for legal users of our software.
They may affect only those, who attempt to crack our drivers for the purpose of
using them for hardware (other USB PCI cards and other PCI solutions) not
supported by us, and persons who would use such cracked software.

COOPERATION--YES, COMPETITION CHEATS--NO

Under such circumstances, only users of hardware other than supported by Elbox
may not feel safe using cracked Elbox drivers. We do protect our intellectual
property and anti-piracy policy employed by Elbox is part of the process.

The loud misinformation campaign started recently in some news lists was
inspired mostly by people related to producers of other hardware and persons who
do not own Elbox hardware.

The question remains: Why would we leave our hard-worked software open for other
developers? Why would we provide them with efforts of long hours of our work and
testing without them spending even a fraction of our expenditures on
development? In the long run, legal users of our products would have to pay for
it, but we do not want to increase our prices only because other developers
would want to lay their hands on results of our work for free.

We are always ready for fair-play cooperation, but we will not agree to and we
will fight back-door and illegal activities.

WE SUPPORT ALL OF YOU

We hope that our explanations will clear away all doubts resulting from this
wide campaign against us. Still, we are really amazed how strongly people
sympathise with crackers... A cracker may only harm your data, as he is not
aware of the complete development and programming process, which takes weeks or
months and includes thorough testing and verification procedures. Remember
please, that a cracker will never take any responsibility for his 'creation.'

Those of you who have purchased our products have trusted us. Your decision was
100% good. We do expand our work for you. We will never let you down when you
have new ideas or just want to solve your problems. We always give you a
competitive edge over other products available in the Amiga market.

Those of you who have tried our hardware and software know the feeling of peace
and certainty. Those who only jump around in the lists will never have this
feeling. Laugh at them, be happy that at the time when they are so uneasy you
may quietly go ahead and work out your own way with Elbox products.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR ENERGY

Do not talk or listen to people who are not interested in acquiring Amiga
hardware or software. These are not real users, they are puppets of other
producers who cannot make their own decisions and who subdue to persuasion of
their 'upperdogs.' They are not interested in you or in helping you, because
they have no knowledge or willingness to be part of the Amiga community
benefiting from using Elbox hardware and software.

BE POSITIVE AND SUPPORTIVE

Instead, whenever you can, talk to Amiga USERS, who do not have Elbox products,
and communicate your first-hand experience with our designs and software. They
are underprivileged due to their clinging to other solutions and we all want to
be the best performers. When we all unite, this small world of Amiga may again
be flourishing and then we all will share the advantages.

Please notify us about piracy (including owning or sharing Elbox software
without the bundled hardware) at anti-piracy@...

Mariusz Wloczysiak
ELBOX COMPUTER, Press Department
contact: press@...

[platon42]

In old versions of the Spider USB driver, when you tried to hack the driver and change the PCI IDs to make a generic USB card work, you'd find that the driver had erased the RDB info. It seems Poseidon detects this and tell you before you reboot.

I had a check that would prohibit using the RDB killing drivers in older versions (different message though), but removed it in V3.x, as it would seem that people have "upgraded" their Elbox drivers by then.

[Zac67]

Good work, Chris.

What really brought me up against Elbox, was their way to handle the issue: no excuse, no regret, just blurb and outright lies. It is NOT legal to destroy data when your precious software thinks it has been manipulated, nor does it stand in any proportion.

In addition, I didn't like the way they handled the whole licensing agreement with you - pretty much found a hole in the agreement and ripped off all USB users. Last but not least that really did hurt the community.

[keropi]

Personal attack removed by moderator

[Piru]

So am I correct in presuming that the Poseidon USB stack contains code which can damage the Amiga Harddisk contents and thus inflict criminal damage?

You're not. And you can't find such code anywhere in Poseidon. There's isn't any.

I hate nothing more than incompetent wannabe hackers.

[platon42]

Piru wrote:
You're not. And you can't find such code anywhere in Poseidon. There's isn't any.

Just as a remark, the full Poseidon source code is checked into the MorphOS Source repository, and thus the MOS team can verify this.

[sicky]

@platon42

Well put Chris, we all appreciate your efforts, shame some people have nothing better to do than start lame threads with no facts whatsoever!

[Doobrey]

voxel wrote:
Sure it's a joke :-)

Poseidon and trident are full of jokes and statements that appears on some occasions, April fools day, chris anniversary, January first, christmas day, etc... or just never appears, just to make mad some malintentionned people ;-)

Yup, I agree 100%, it's just Chris' sense of humour.
It's a shame the original poster couldn't use his brain to come to the same conclusion and immediatley jumped in with a 'OMG look what I found, it must be true' posting.

If ascadol is sooooo 1337 with his hacking skills, why didn't he post the disassembly proving the integrity checking and RDSK trashing that he claims?