[ShikiSuen]

Originally Posted by RCK

Hello Dave,
Thanks for link removal, I was not aware of backdoor sorry.
Are "nulled" versions are pirate php files without license ?

I also find some thread with modifications todo listing.
Are those kind of listing are also forbidden to be shared ?

This reply only talks about vBulletin 3.x releases.

1. Whether they have back doors or not challenges your expertises in computer programming. Only you (or any expert you can trust in helping you doing this) can tell whether there are backdoors made deliberately.

2. vBulletin 3.8.x NULLED versions are pirated php files. They were made based on official files. Official php files are zend-encrypted. Null teams decrypt them and rip out the customer system (and possible watermarks) throughout these files. Making such distros is doing software piracy and is under legal risk. **Some** null teams do deply backdoor codes among their distros.

3. On consumer side, official encrypted builds of vBulletin 3.x are definitely not compatible with PHP 7.2 and later. They also have lack of MySQL 8.x syntax support (and later), requiring users to use MariaDB or continue using MySQL 5.x builds.

4. I am not familiar with PHP programming related to MySQL. One can go through error messages generated by PHP 7.4 (probably the final major release of PHP 7 series) to troubleshoot the compatibility issues throughout PHP files, theme templates, language xmls, etc. These must be performed on an decrypted version, which means that the removal of customer system is not necessary. Also, if you are doing this, turn off gzip compressions in both your forum settings and your web hosting software (apache, nginx, etc.)... Otherwise, a forum page can be unloadable due to being scrambled by syntax warning messages injected by PHP itself.

5. You should be fine as long as you have a valid license in your vBulletin official customer account and it is only designated to the sole forum site you are using (whether this site is using Nulled version of vBulletin or not). I suggest you to confirm by emailing (not by posting on their official forums) vBulletin pre-sale teams to confirm possible legal risks. Posting such questions on vBulletin official forums can cause lifetime ban of your forum account within 24hrs.

6. To my knowledge, if a site is running unlicensed vBulletin, the domain provider and / or the host provider may under DMCA pressure from vBulletin officials and they are likely to have to stop providing you their domain / host service.

// I don't make decryptions or Null piracy. I am just recently having curiocities in vBulletin 3.8.x compatibility with PHP 7.4 and modern system environments.