HXO-Life detection in Emerald...

Already posted this on the Modularsystems forums with some anonymity, taking the risk of posting here under my SL name.

[22:14] -NAME PROTECTED-: (Saved Tue Jan 26 04:24:18 2010) ?OTRv2?
-USER UUID PROTECTED- has requested an Off-the-Record private conversation. However, your viewer doesn't support OTR. HXO-Life Viewer does, see http://otr.cypherpunks.ca/ for more information about OTR.

So this guy I suspected having a copybot viewer tries to IM me offline, it gives this above error. Any normal Emerald user, as he claims to be, would say Greenlife Emerald where his OTR says HXO...Is this a worthwhile piece of evidence to compile into a security action against the user? Are there other methods of detection specifically for HXO-Life?
If the user appears on my Emerald Radar as a "?" viewer in conjunction to this kind of error, is that also evidence of an unknown-to-emerald viewer?
Am I correct in my belief that -paying- for any kind of viewer (which I've snapped this guy admitting to) is grounds for ban/fine? Is there a "50L" Emerald viewer with additional capabilities being trafficked through SL? Please respond, because my home sim is crawling with suspicious viewer/user activity, and I'm accumulating evidence faster every day, but unsure of the proper course of action for report and am unaware of my own rights in filing such a claim. Thus far my methods have been to simply collect data and build a strong case to present, I've collected names of all vendors/authors the suspect wears/uses, including preparing a report for the seller of the original suspected copied items. Everywhere I turn people try to protect this user/viewer and lead me to believe they've also gotten it from him or are covering for someone important to the sim who has. I feel really alone in my struggle against this copybot on my fave sim, if anyone can help please reply, I'm stuck in an uphill battle against several users who will soon have me banned completely from the sim to stop my snooping around...and once the reports are filed everyone will know who snitched and may bear false witness against me. Please help.

Not only that one but there are other ways LL can ID the counterfeiting viewers. Might be why we keep seeing so many "why was I banned unfairly?" messages over on the blog forum.

But how about editing out the details that will alert the coders to what needs to be changed? And just say you got a message that identified the client. Or just delete the whole thing and i'll delete mine and then you can delete yours if there are no responses.

And yes there are more counterfeiter viewers in Second Life than roaches in a crammed full roach motel.

I haven't heard of HXOLife, but it sure sounds suspicious to me.

I would:

1. AR anyone you suspect of having a copybot viewer or engaged in content theft. Let LL sort them out.

2. Do NOT pay money, either real$ or $L, for a viewer. So many good viewers are free, paying for one is almost a scam by definition.

3. Remember you have the right to ban anyone you want from your land. How many you ban and how quickly and for what reason is always your choice.

[EDIT: Your use of "my sim" threw me off. Re-reading, I see you are a resident on this sim. I sympathize with you. Have you considered that, even if you use an alt and nobody suspects you of blowing the whistle, that if your sim owner's acocunt gets suspended, your "favorite sim" is likely to go away? I mean, I think you are doing the right thing, but doing the right thing is likely to impact you, personally, one way or the other.]

Hi Swiss

I've heard of HXO viewer from the guy who owned a website titled "A day in the Life of a Copybotter" (The infamous Swedish guy)
HXO is currently the "top dog" out of all malicious 3rd party viewers. You can't download it freely...i think it can only be purchased (it was initially 25k L....looks like the price has dropped as they're scamming each other claiming to be HXO too)...it's very hush hush how people obtain this particular viewer. The last I heard (before X-Mas) only a dozen people had this HXO viewer. It was created by a German guy just like the Neil Life viewer.

I'm surprised Emerald was able to detect it, as HXO clones Emerald or the official SL viewer when it logs in....maybe that offline IM caught him out! You should ban anyone with unidentifiable or suspicious viewers from your SIM. Prevention is better than cure!

The only thing you can do is try and match copied products to original creators (not an easy task given the number of creators out there).....and inform the original Creators who can then file a DMCA. The copybotters tend to copy the most famous of SL creators or top-of -the range products....that might narrow it down a bit.
Tip- do your investigation with an ALT, never your main a/c. You could AR users, but i fear most at LL CS would not have heard of HXO because of its lack of distribution, so they'd be unaware of all it's functionalities......but yes, its the most advanced malicious viewer out there at the moment.


.

If what Rene says is true, then...

With the Client viewer being open source, you can expect a long line of new Viewers appearing over time. It really is a lost cause...unless LL develops another type of Client viewer and closes the door on all 3rd party ones at Login. Hushing a forum thread is going to do very little.....you can Google tons of info on all of these Viewers....and it will only grow in number if you follow the paper trail and links!



.

LL can close source all they want. Within minutes of closing source the OpenGL exporters will be in use.

True....but at least it requires additional work, and you have to know more than simply right clicking on buttons! At least with close source it will stop most of the casual copying

only for the amount of time it takes to automate it. About 12 hours max.

Opensource is opensource. Nothing they could eventually close unless they develop all parts new.

People always seem to forget that copybot predates open sourcing the viewer.

If the viewer had never been open-sourced copybots would have just become easier and easier to use as well over time and it wouldn't have made any kind of difference.

Even a non-workable "no third party viewers/bots can log on" solution wouldn't help: a proxy in between the viewer and LL is undetectable by either side and could just as easily copy everything as well.

LL can decide to use a streaming method like OnLive, bye bye viewer and copybot.

http://news.cnet.com/onlive-could-threaten-xbox-ps3-and-wii/

I agree what you're saying......that's why i said it's a lost cause.!
We just have to learn to live with it...and protect our own assets as best we can....and the community as a whole need to do their civic duties and report each instance they find. Other than that, there's really little that can be done.

HXO is the latest fad, in a couple months time it will be another Viewer....and so it will continue. Cryo Life by comparison has become pre-historic!


.

And bye bye SL when the price to connect hits $50 a month lmao.

Emerald didn't 'detect' it, what you are seeing is the result of text search-replace in the source code of the OTR encryption engine before compile and for that matter may even be some wannabe that compiled any source he had and put HXO in there to look cool. However HXO has been cracked, leaked, torrented etc so you never know. As to unidentifiable viewers, the stock LL viewer shows up as that question mark, as do any of the other viewers that do not have clothing layer protection enabled, give or take some spoofery here and there. So banning by question mark is a Bad Idea.

that wouldn't necessarily stop content copying, and would be unworkable for LL since it puts all the processing on their end... not gonna happen

Onlive is running late, isn't it?

HXO is freely available. I was browsing some SL related forums and found a link to it. I downloaded it and logged onto my openSim grid with it to see what it had. I try to keep up with what's going on in that area just to try and keep up with what's going on in that area. As a content creator, I'm obviously against any copybotting, but it's a good idea to see what's going on on the other side. To the OP: Sounds like a tough situation, but if everyone around you seems to be the bad guy by protecting this guy, maybe it's time to pack up and find a new favorite spot.

So what's the scoop on HXO? You say you've got it, does it blatantly permit the copying/griefing shown in the vids on youtube? Don't hold out on the good parts, what are the features?

The price should be the same than XBox Live.



Of course not, people can copy a design just by looking at it. It would stop copybot.