Hi! I would like to know how to remove *all* of the Call Home features of vBulletin 3.0 Final.

I tried doing a search on it, both here and at a few other sites, but came up empty. I figure since this is a Reversing Forum running vB 3.0, it should be a question easily answered here.

TIA!

Howdy,

Not to pee on your breakfast but.......

More people get busted running stolen V-bulletin by people
"ratting" them out.
Save yourself the aggravation and get a free php board.

BTW, this forum software is not that expensive and the support
is excellent in comparison to every other server software.

Woodmann

I think its damn smart of the authors to ask to be shown all the weaknesses in their code.

Bravo!

They might even be smart enough to use a proxy

Woodmann

Well, that's the funny part. I *am* a licensed owner of vB. I just don't like the idea of code that Calls Home. I hate it on sheer principle.

So I'm trying to get rid of it. I found some code in /admincp/ that references version.vbulletin.com. I eliminated that, so that now the AdminCP shows N/A for the Most Recent Version. But I don't know if there's something else that I've missed.

Can you help?

use maguma studio to search and ( eliminate or replace )

unwanted codez , dont forget to add all extentionz ( php.css.style)

in search box , save ur work , reinstall vb3 .

Yes, but is there other code other than "version.vbulletin.com" that I should be looking for?

As a theoretical technique for finding out if some php software is "calling home", I would simply use a personal firewall to check if the webserver software (or php.exe if you're not running it as an integrated module) is making any outbound connections.

The authors might of course have designed it to perform the "calling home" by routing it through the clients accessing the board too, and in that case I would use either a personal firewall on my browser (making it notify about all outbound connections except the ones to the forum server), or a proxy server, doing the same thing.

Although, the calling home will probably only be perform at relatively seldom and randomized occasions, and if they have also encrypted/hidden the addresses and other signs of calling home in the code well enough to be hard to catch with a regular expression search, I guess there is only long-term tests or detailed code review that'll do.

Firewalling your webserver to block any outbound connections is good security practise in any way, so do that and you will be safe if they don't route the calling home through the clients (there might be "legal problems" or similar with that technique, so I doubt the authors would do it, but you never know).

2 yearz ago , can,t remember .

but i don,t think there waz another code .

hxxp://members.lycos.co.uk/sssevennn/vb.jpg

Delta, you're absolutely right insofar as a long term basis is concerned, as well as general security measures. You'll get no argument from me.

But if anyone should happen to have existing and superior knowledge as to whether there is any remaining code other than what I caught, I would appreciate hearing it.

Can Vbulletin licenses be bought second hand?