Or you didn't find them.

Trust me, most of them have backdoors, and i can know because i have been studying for some time.

That's strongly possible ;-) I've just use Araxis Merge to compare files and only things changed seem to be the identification. Other explaination : the hacker was honest lol ;D

A little question : where does these nullified versions come from ? :ninja:

What the hell is nulled version? Or are you trying to say... illegal copy of vB?

nulled versions are usually "provided" by lucious real owners (licensed) that wants to help their friends to have a free version of a paid script like vB. they are usually found in P2P networks, anonymous ftps, and private clubs... (and we even find licensed versions flooding the networks lately!)

you can easily find nulled/nullified versions of any kind of php/cgi etc scripts on gnutella - just do a search with your prefered p2p client, you will have some surprises how people are malicious.. ;?) you can even find versions of vBulletin that were never released... let's say vB 4.1 was found last month... even 4.0 was never put on a table, so this was forcefully a virus or something...

and even big corporations have tried lately to flood these p2p networks... Microsoft is well known to have provided parts of the Windows NT sourcecode some years back... just to give them a peak on the market...

and usually, nullified (named to be a null version because all securities are broken) and nulled versions are distributed anonymously, but lately, we found that some vB coders distributed some enhanced versions of the script... this is widely seen, phpBB and IPB had the same problems in the last years.

these nullified version always have their license verification process broken, that's the main point of these activities usually... the harder the code is to break, the more we see them on the market... challenge for the hackers.

spywares, backdoors, java verifs, encoded or not, these kids always play the game to break these systems that were built just to go against their own actions... no nullifiers, no need to spyfix!

That was a response to Reeve of shinra, and actually has nothing to do with you running or not running a nulled version...

In future read more carefully before attempting to insult people ;)

Satan

i think that the discussion is now expanded much wider than your first question, i hope this was understood by you... this forum is a place for sharing information, and most of the time, someone else will run and ask a different question regarding the first situation and things branch to some other discussion (when it's not overtaken!)

While you can remove the version checking feature from vBulletin, downloading the software from any site other than www.vBulletin.com is piracy and can cause legal problems for you down the road. Pre-modded versions of the software are large security risks and as a vBulletin owner, you should make all modifications yourself or have someone you trust do so. The security risk to your site and your member's information is very high right now. Since Identity Theft is the fastest growing crime and can have financial impacts on an individual for years, this is not something you should encourage by using insecure software sources.

not exactly>_> a nulled version just removes the call home functionality which is used to check the most recent version and the license. thats about it.

It's just as legal to run a nulled version as it is to drive a stolen car.

Meaning that it is ok, as long as you have a drivers license?