Shoutbox

Well, you have a point here. I could make that an option to try and make it more difficult to decode the skins for beginners.

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Originally posted by Patchou
and make it more difficult to decode the skins for beginners.

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Specially for those who change the author name or something else and go everywhere telling they made it. I think they won't like to read the documentation just for that.

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Originally posted by Patchou
Well, you have a point here. I could make that an option to try and make it more difficult to decode the skins for beginners.

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Well I did suggest you make it so Plus doesn't extract the contents of a plsk a while ago That would also help a tiny bit. Though there's only so much you can do anyway, I'm sure someone persistent enough could decode the UIB anyway.

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Originally posted by Willz
I'm sure someone persistent enough could decode the UIB anyway.

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Yeah, since there is a documented tool to encode and decode the UIBs, it would just be a matter of extracting the UIBs from the plsk and manually decoding them from the command line.  Every annoying step helps prevent theft though.

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Originally posted by TheSteve
Every annoying step helps prevent theft though.

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Sure =)
Still it would be nice if there was a tool wich could make all skin's files  request a password to be modified....

My main issue with this is that we're talking about obfuscation. Once I start taking this path, there will never be an end to it and I don't want some develoeprs to think what they did is secure, encrypted and unhackable.

The real question would be: so far, has it been a real problem for skin (or script) developers. I understand some people will edit your skin, change your background picture and post it in their blog sometimes. But as far as I see it, 99% of people download their scripts and skins from the Plus! site and we have MenthiX there who makes sure everything stays clean.

This is an open discussion, I'd like to understand what you would expect to change if I was starting to add this kind of protection feature.

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Originally posted by Patchou
This is an open discussion, I'd like to understand what you would expect to change if I was starting to add this kind of protection feature.

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The "if" is already a gorgeous beggining =P
Anyways, something to protect our work while still letting others seeing it. Like as if there could be a way to only see/edit those files through a Plus! window or tool.

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Originally posted by Patchou
My main issue with this is that we're talking about obfuscation. Once I start taking this path, there will never be an end to it and I don't want some develoeprs to think what they did is secure, encrypted and unhackable.

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The thing is the people that are most likely to take a skin and just edit 1 or two images and re-release it as their own are the people that look for the easy way out. The first thing they look for is the images directory and at the moment its in plain sight. I'm sure Menthix will be able to back me up here, because the majority of rips that happen don't even touch the UIFiles at all.

By not extracting the contents of the plsk, at least it helps because those kind of people who will just look and go "oh no images, meh oh well" and just move on. The people who actually take the time to extract everything and go through the files are most likely the ones that just want to apply a personal modification for private use or learn from the code.

I know its virtually impossible to make something that's unhackable, but at least by slowing down those lazy people it will help stop.

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Originally posted by Willz
I'm sure Menthix will be able to back me up here, because the majority of rips that happen don't even touch the UIFiles at all.

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For example: Menthix's reply to x-men origin wolverine skin plus 2009. After that post I got several more rips based on that one, just replacing images.

But I'm not sure if not extracting the skins will really make a difference. If people need to compress their skins to make a package, people will also know how to decompress existing packages. The flood of rips I linked to seems to originate from a "tutorial", which is in fact directly a rip of an early version of Ryddyck's Windows 7 Skin. It only takes 1 tutorial/post on a popular site describing how to bypass whatever obfuscation is put in place, and people are back to ripping as usual.

If using encoded UIBs or no unpacking are easy changes, sure, it may help a bit. But I rather see energy put in to making the skinning engine better and making it easier for people to learn skinning. That includes proper tutorials which will actually teach people what they're doing instead of showing them how to replace images. I can add new tutorials on the site and promote them.