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Rules!
ARTEAM FORUM RULES..
General Concepts behind the forum rules:
On the one hand rules in general are not so simple to be written. On the other hand we're not bots and we should try to understand the underlying concepts a rule try to express.
We are an open community, almost borderline, because doing tutorials is a task which is partially tolerated by laws and permitted. We build this place and team so as to survive in the fresh air and not the closed underground. This is the reason why we stopped releasing cracks, we wanted not to have problems and to be free to do what we like most. This is what we want to preserve, being tolerated somehow and to not have problems with anyone.
So the sometimes contradicting behavior of admins and other watchdogs must always be viewed under this light. We don't want to lose this wonderful place! This is a place for everyone, but anyone loving it should participate keeping it clean from shit, like crack requests, lazy boys, flamers and other useless things... There are hundreds of variants! Anyone knows how easy is to hide a simple crack request behind a tutorial request.
Generally speaking, if we see some knowledge requests or sharing we are prone to leave the posts, otherwise they get removed, closed or worse. If the post author feels bad after our action, please consider that most probably the problem was a bad formulation of the post itself and likely that the way it was posted the first time was incorrect.
Rules:
Rule 1 (most important): We have potentially illegal stuff inside. All the commercial programs used within our tutorials have been used only for the purpose of demonstrating the theories and methods described. These documents are released under the license of not using the information inside them to attack systems of programs for piracy. If you do it will be against our rules. No distribution of patched applications has been done under any media or host. The applications used were most of the times already been patched by other fellows, and cracked versions were available since a lot of time. ARTeam or the authors of the papers shouldn’t be considered responsible for damages to the companies holding rights on those programs. The scope of this document as well as any other ARTeam tutorial is of sharing knowledge and teaching how to patch applications, how to bypass protections and generally speaking how to improve the RCE art. We are not releasing any cracked application. We are not at all encouraging people to release cracked applications, damages if there will be any have to be claimed to persons badly using information, not under our license.
2. Purpose of the Forum: This Forum exists to facilitate the sharing of knowledge about Reverse Engineering and other computer security related topics. The exchange of knowledge is the main reason for the existence of this forum and requests for cracks, warez and other similar issues will not be tolerated. Alternatively, highly endorsed is the sharing of ideas, novel attacks or reversing techniques and discussion on special targets, not for the sake of defeating the target itself but to discuss its protection mechanisms. Tutorials in any written or multimedia form are also highly appreciated as methods to share your knowledge and generally speaking improve the art of reversing.
3. When a target is explicitly proposed it must be clear and well documented the efforts you have already spent and the results you had while trying to reverse the target. This forum exists for the purpose at point 1 and not to help you with cracking any specific program. If the author of the post will not clearly demonstrate his efforts trying to reverse a program, the requests itself will be closed and the users warning level raised. Moderators are responsible for evaluating this case-by-case.
4. Before asking a question you must demonstrate that you did an extensive search on the internet, other forums and this same forum, show where you're stuck and what you tried prevent this problem. RCE is a difficult science and needs constant research, work and time, do not try shortcuts!
5. Do not bump, most times someone will answer soon or later. If not, the topic might not be of interest.
6. Posting targets names: Posting target names is allowed as long as it is clear that the target is functional to improve your reversing skills. In this board the targets (named programs) are only functional to your learning experience and not viceversa. There are other boards on which you can request cracks for a specific program. If you are unsure about what this means, you should abide by these 2 suggestions:
6.1. If you post the name of the target and want to share pieces of their code and patches to be done, don't include the addresses of the assembler instructions.
6.2. If no target name is provided, feel free to show the code with addresses and everything. Make sure you remove any identifying names from pictures or code snippets, leaving such information in 'accidentally' is unacceptable and will be seen as an attempt at circumventing forum policy.
7. Direct links: Active links to downloadable material (exe, zip or other file formats) are not allowed. Use instead links to pages containing the final target, so as to give people the possibility to evaluate the context of a download (for example links to html pages are allowed). In all the other cases use modifiers such as hxxp:// or _http:// or wrap the link between [code] bbcodes.
8. Obscenities: Obscene language/material is not allowed, and direct links to obscene material is forbidden. (One is, however, allowed to post a link to a relevant site that may or may not feature pornographic pop-ups; the poster is absolutely required to forewarn of this when posting.)
The moderator and all the users are asked to follow the netiquette rules.
9. Mutual Respect: Members and team members alike are expected to behave in a civilized manner and respect one-another. This means no derogatory or snide remarks of any kind.
Traditional social manners ("good manners") such as "please" and "thank you" are encouraged. Rudeness will not be tolerated, and personal insults may be reported to Moderators who will be allowed to admonish or suspend the offending party.
10. Spamming: Users found to be spamming or posting unjustified commercial links with a view to promotion of a commercial entity or self-promotion will be subject to banning immediately.
The post will be deleted or the relevant links rendered inert/removed.
11. Politics, Race and Religion: Discussions of a political, racial, or religious nature are strictly forbidden. This is a reverse engineering forum where the main objective is the sharing of knowledge, if such subjects are to be discussed it should be done at a site other than ARTeam. In the interests of all parties involved, this means any site which openly embraces such dialog.
12. Hijacking of ARTeam name, logo, style, etc: ARTeam forum members are strictly prohibited to use ARTeam name, disclaimer and other labels that bear the sign of ARTeam in their creations, whether it comes to reversing tutorials, reversing tools or else. Using material like the disclaimer or verification notice from the ARTeam tutorials or having links or references to the ARTeam website (unless they are relevant to the tutorial or in a greeting of course) is something which is not permitted as it may cause confusion about the status of the author. If something has the exact same wording as an official ARTeam release then a reader could be forgiven for thinking that the author was a member of the team. It's usually in your interest to collaborate in this situation and penalties therefore range from a re-editing of your contribution up to a permanent BAN. Even if your intentions were good.
Moreover don't ever think about releasing cracks, patches or keygenerators signed as i.e. XYZ/ARTeam forum member or any other similar stuffs. This second case is worst than the first one and deserves a immediate BAN and the publication in the "house of shame".
On the other side, if you wish to release reversing tutorials,tools etc. under ARTeam flag, use the official way: contact any of the ARTeam members (BLUE) and send your work for a review. ARTeam retains the discretion to decide what will be published on our website as official ARTeam releases, depending on the quality of your work: if you are polite we'll be also and we can collaborate to help you to improve the quality of your work.
Final Remark
These rules are not negotiable and as such, users found to be in violation of any of the above points will be subject to disciplinary action, ie: account suspended, topic closed/deleted, etc. This will be done at the discretion of moderators. If you feel that you have been wrongly disciplined, feel free to contact the moderator responsible to put forward your explanation of events, but remember that the moderators decision is final.
last update: March 2010
General Concepts behind the forum rules:
On the one hand rules in general are not so simple to be written. On the other hand we're not bots and we should try to understand the underlying concepts a rule try to express.
We are an open community, almost borderline, because doing tutorials is a task which is partially tolerated by laws and permitted. We build this place and team so as to survive in the fresh air and not the closed underground. This is the reason why we stopped releasing cracks, we wanted not to have problems and to be free to do what we like most. This is what we want to preserve, being tolerated somehow and to not have problems with anyone.
So the sometimes contradicting behavior of admins and other watchdogs must always be viewed under this light. We don't want to lose this wonderful place! This is a place for everyone, but anyone loving it should participate keeping it clean from shit, like crack requests, lazy boys, flamers and other useless things... There are hundreds of variants! Anyone knows how easy is to hide a simple crack request behind a tutorial request.
Generally speaking, if we see some knowledge requests or sharing we are prone to leave the posts, otherwise they get removed, closed or worse. If the post author feels bad after our action, please consider that most probably the problem was a bad formulation of the post itself and likely that the way it was posted the first time was incorrect.
Rules:
Rule 1 (most important): We have potentially illegal stuff inside. All the commercial programs used within our tutorials have been used only for the purpose of demonstrating the theories and methods described. These documents are released under the license of not using the information inside them to attack systems of programs for piracy. If you do it will be against our rules. No distribution of patched applications has been done under any media or host. The applications used were most of the times already been patched by other fellows, and cracked versions were available since a lot of time. ARTeam or the authors of the papers shouldn’t be considered responsible for damages to the companies holding rights on those programs. The scope of this document as well as any other ARTeam tutorial is of sharing knowledge and teaching how to patch applications, how to bypass protections and generally speaking how to improve the RCE art. We are not releasing any cracked application. We are not at all encouraging people to release cracked applications, damages if there will be any have to be claimed to persons badly using information, not under our license.
2. Purpose of the Forum: This Forum exists to facilitate the sharing of knowledge about Reverse Engineering and other computer security related topics. The exchange of knowledge is the main reason for the existence of this forum and requests for cracks, warez and other similar issues will not be tolerated. Alternatively, highly endorsed is the sharing of ideas, novel attacks or reversing techniques and discussion on special targets, not for the sake of defeating the target itself but to discuss its protection mechanisms. Tutorials in any written or multimedia form are also highly appreciated as methods to share your knowledge and generally speaking improve the art of reversing.
3. When a target is explicitly proposed it must be clear and well documented the efforts you have already spent and the results you had while trying to reverse the target. This forum exists for the purpose at point 1 and not to help you with cracking any specific program. If the author of the post will not clearly demonstrate his efforts trying to reverse a program, the requests itself will be closed and the users warning level raised. Moderators are responsible for evaluating this case-by-case.
4. Before asking a question you must demonstrate that you did an extensive search on the internet, other forums and this same forum, show where you're stuck and what you tried prevent this problem. RCE is a difficult science and needs constant research, work and time, do not try shortcuts!
5. Do not bump, most times someone will answer soon or later. If not, the topic might not be of interest.
6. Posting targets names: Posting target names is allowed as long as it is clear that the target is functional to improve your reversing skills. In this board the targets (named programs) are only functional to your learning experience and not viceversa. There are other boards on which you can request cracks for a specific program. If you are unsure about what this means, you should abide by these 2 suggestions:
6.1. If you post the name of the target and want to share pieces of their code and patches to be done, don't include the addresses of the assembler instructions.
6.2. If no target name is provided, feel free to show the code with addresses and everything. Make sure you remove any identifying names from pictures or code snippets, leaving such information in 'accidentally' is unacceptable and will be seen as an attempt at circumventing forum policy.
7. Direct links: Active links to downloadable material (exe, zip or other file formats) are not allowed. Use instead links to pages containing the final target, so as to give people the possibility to evaluate the context of a download (for example links to html pages are allowed). In all the other cases use modifiers such as hxxp:// or _http:// or wrap the link between [code] bbcodes.
8. Obscenities: Obscene language/material is not allowed, and direct links to obscene material is forbidden. (One is, however, allowed to post a link to a relevant site that may or may not feature pornographic pop-ups; the poster is absolutely required to forewarn of this when posting.)
The moderator and all the users are asked to follow the netiquette rules.
9. Mutual Respect: Members and team members alike are expected to behave in a civilized manner and respect one-another. This means no derogatory or snide remarks of any kind.
Traditional social manners ("good manners") such as "please" and "thank you" are encouraged. Rudeness will not be tolerated, and personal insults may be reported to Moderators who will be allowed to admonish or suspend the offending party.
10. Spamming: Users found to be spamming or posting unjustified commercial links with a view to promotion of a commercial entity or self-promotion will be subject to banning immediately.
The post will be deleted or the relevant links rendered inert/removed.
11. Politics, Race and Religion: Discussions of a political, racial, or religious nature are strictly forbidden. This is a reverse engineering forum where the main objective is the sharing of knowledge, if such subjects are to be discussed it should be done at a site other than ARTeam. In the interests of all parties involved, this means any site which openly embraces such dialog.
12. Hijacking of ARTeam name, logo, style, etc: ARTeam forum members are strictly prohibited to use ARTeam name, disclaimer and other labels that bear the sign of ARTeam in their creations, whether it comes to reversing tutorials, reversing tools or else. Using material like the disclaimer or verification notice from the ARTeam tutorials or having links or references to the ARTeam website (unless they are relevant to the tutorial or in a greeting of course) is something which is not permitted as it may cause confusion about the status of the author. If something has the exact same wording as an official ARTeam release then a reader could be forgiven for thinking that the author was a member of the team. It's usually in your interest to collaborate in this situation and penalties therefore range from a re-editing of your contribution up to a permanent BAN. Even if your intentions were good.
Moreover don't ever think about releasing cracks, patches or keygenerators signed as i.e. XYZ/ARTeam forum member or any other similar stuffs. This second case is worst than the first one and deserves a immediate BAN and the publication in the "house of shame".
On the other side, if you wish to release reversing tutorials,tools etc. under ARTeam flag, use the official way: contact any of the ARTeam members (BLUE) and send your work for a review. ARTeam retains the discretion to decide what will be published on our website as official ARTeam releases, depending on the quality of your work: if you are polite we'll be also and we can collaborate to help you to improve the quality of your work.
Final Remark
These rules are not negotiable and as such, users found to be in violation of any of the above points will be subject to disciplinary action, ie: account suspended, topic closed/deleted, etc. This will be done at the discretion of moderators. If you feel that you have been wrongly disciplined, feel free to contact the moderator responsible to put forward your explanation of events, but remember that the moderators decision is final.
last update: March 2010