FIRST VIRUS HITS XBMC USERS

[whufclee]

After a very traumatic week behind the scenes at XBMCHub UmOuch (the owner of the site) has banned all the top devs and mods and released a virus out to the community.

It's a very sad day, all seemed to be going in the right direction behind the scenes and it looked as though a compromise had been found but then soon after his announcement there was a massive U-Turn by umouch which involved a mass banning and sending a virus out to every XBMC user that uses the xbmhub repository.

Fortunately for you guys it doesn't affect the xbox and will only affect mainbranch XBMC.

What is the virus:
A small script designed to delete all repositories and addons that are linked to banned members (this is Mikey1234, Voinage, Jas0nPC, Mash2k, The-One and a few more including myself).

How to delete the virus:
Uninstall the xbmchub repository. I'm sorry but this is the only solution for now as we have no idea what else umouch may have planned behind the scenes - he really does seem to have just lost the plot.

What caused all this?
Mikey1234 has been working on an ad delivery system which users can opt out of if they prefer and also choose the time the ads will appear BUT THEY WILL NEVER APPEAR DURING VIDEO PLAYBACK and at most an ad will appear after 8 hours and you can choose whether to watch it or not. I personally support the idea as I know how much time, effort and money devs put into creating addons and all for free of charge. I put at least 30 hours per week into xbmchub (or at least I did until I was banned!) so god only knows how much time and effort the likes of Mikey puts in with all his great addons and support. The money from the ads would be shared between participating developers as a thankyou for their time and help them buy new xbmc hardware. This was the issue that umouch had problems with and it has caused bad vibes in the camp. I sent a video out to my youtube subscribers telling them how to get hold of their favourite devs that have been banned, I didn't mention xbmchub in any way shape or form but I received a comment on my channel from umouch that just stated "lol" and when I tried to login to xbmchub to talk to him this is what I was greeted with:

Through this whole saga I have been impartial and had no intention of leaving xbmchub as a moderator but my hand has been forced and as I'm not allowed to login to the site I have no idea what lies are being spread at the moment and there's no way to clear any of our names. I would suggest heading over to the new forum where you can see the other side of the story, here is a direct link to the proposed ad delivery system so you can make your own mind up on it http://www.xbmctalk.com/showthread.php? ... opers-fund.

I'm sorry for anyone that has been affected by this virus, I feel your pain. I've setup loads of units for friends and family (mostly old folks) and they will have no idea how to fix the issue. This is not going to end well

Big love to you all

Lee

[VanZan]

To be fair umOuch isn't naming names whuf. I lost a lot of respect for Mikey when he stitched me up with my Starstreams account (asking me for a log then the next night I got banned because there were nine different ips using my details). Also he's involved with dubious people like the crowd that run offsidestreams (OMFG/FSS owners in the past).

To be honest since absolutely everybody is saying something different I have basically no idea what's going on! lol

[whufclee]

Well I think you know me by now mate, what I've written is my own personal experience and is gospel. I'm not going to speak on anybody else's behalf but what I can say is that I've been lucky enough to meet some of the devs that have been banned and I also speak to a number of them on a daily basis and they are very nice guys. Jas0n in particular has been the most helpful guy on xbmchub I've seen over the years and it would appear he's been banned for "association".

[cifa]

thanks for letting us know - I've hardly used XBMC in the last 1/12 but tried last night. It was a painful 30mins - nothing would feckin work
my patience is stretched beyond breaking point with xbmc - maybe i'm getting long in the tooth - but its not much fun at the minute
hope it picks back up

cheers

[BuZz]

Can't say I like the advert system. And people will just remove it from the code anyway, and then no-doubt the authors will start obfuscating the code and so on. The actions of xbmchub.com are of course very bad. you do not delete stuff from peoples machines without consent. Ugly.

you can read the other side of the argument here

http://www.xbmchub.com/forums/announcem ... ilout.html

I would personally stay away from both xbmchub and the addons with adverts.

[VanZan]

I'm not liking what I'm seeing. The xbmchub site seems to be getting overloaded as if it's under attack. I've been over at xbmctalk and I don't like the way Mikey was initially saying the advert system was opt in but actually meant that by using the addon you're "opting in".

This stinks. Mikey seems to be lowlife.

[trogggy]

Ah well, I did ask...
http://www.xbmchub.com/forums/front-pag ... post120145

Gutted for you Lee - from outside it looks like you're prob'ly more affected by this than any dev, with guides, videos and builds tied to the hub.

[chunk1982]

Talk about a knob head move

[infinity8x3]

Glad this doesn't effect us, I guess this is one perk of not being a part of mainbranch score one for XBMC4XBOX.

[whufclee]

@buzz: I do share some of your concerns regarding the ad system but if done correctly it could work out very well and would encourage more devlopers. As mentioned the Google Play store works very well, yes you can easily find hacked versions of apps that come without the ads but I generally keep the ad versions installed and I'm fairly sure the majority of users do. From chatting to the guys what I can see is that any developer wanting to use the new system will add some code to their addons that checks the time, then every 8 hours (only within that addon) the end user will receive an ad. Presumably as it's using XBMC it will either be a little popup or a youtube clip and both can easily be closed at the press of a button. By the way not every developer on the new forum will be using the ad delivery system, they are there because they've been forced away from their old home. Sorry for bringing all this up on your forum mate!

@trogggy: Thanks mate, it's not so much the banning that has upset me but the whole virus saga. Even if I hadn't been banned I would have been very outspoken on this issue in the moderator section of the site and if the virus had gone out I would have most likely left of my own accord anyway. So this is his reply?

trogggy... its okay. there is no banning for questions or opinions.Only spamming the boards to lie, confuse, or spread mistruths. There is more to the story this user is sharing. He knows it. I know it. I can only deal with justifying so many actions at once.

Well I wish he would tell me what more there is to the story! I've attempted to get some kind of answers from him via my youtube channel so it's out in the open and also privately on skype but as yet he hasn't come up with any answers. I can only presume he's referring to me in that sentence regarding spamming the boards to lie etc. As someone who I really respect can I ask you for an honest answer, has there ever been a post by me that fits that bill?

@VanZan: I know there's no love lost between you and Mikey and I don't really want to get into the issue - it's between you two. I regularly chat to Mikey and I also speak to the guy at starstreams so I know all about what happened. You are of course entitled to your opinion but bare these facts in mind... Mikey is the only developer I've spoken to that is willing to try and keep his addons xbox compatible, he organised the recent xbmchub fest and paid for it OUT OF HIS OWN POCKET - an event that cost hundreds of pounds. The support he gives for his addons is second to none and when a request has been made for a new feature or completely new addon he's straight on the case even though he knows it's not something he'll ever use but it's good for the community. Please weigh up at all the facts when describing someone as "lowlife".

[Xphazer]

Both sides where wrong IMO - Ad's are a no no and deleting stuff without users consent is also a no no.

People often mistake the Ad's models - "oh, they are used to ad's on their internet browser and mobile devices, they wont care"
VERY bad assumption. The day I will accept any form of ad's in XBMC it self, on my TV screen, pigs will fly.

Deleting users machines content - Anyone got an apple with a bite in mind? Or an "a" with an orange line underneath? lol

Its not very ethical to opt-in users without their consent, but perfectly legal. Even required by the law in some cases.
Google and Canonical are doing it everyday.
Now, doing so without any legal disclosure, or any way for users to know that they are opt-in and sending some of their personal data is a whole different story.
Its totally against the spirit of free software /open source and probably illegal in many country's.

Mind you I have very little knowledge of what's going on here.
Just from what I can see, everyone is wrong, and I think the idea of idea of having ad's and personal data collected in XBMC frighten me more than having to redo one of my RPi install tomorrow.

Also, "Can this be called a virus" could make another nice debate.^^ - I don't think it can personally.
It felt in the category of Adware, wich in my opinion cannot be called a virus at this level.
Its a piece of software that people decided to use by their own who did something not very "ethical".

[whufclee]

I would call the update that was released to the maintenance tool a virus. Without warning it deleted content not related to that particular addon - a piece of software that mass deletes system data without warning is a virus in my book.

As for the ads, it's something users and devs alike will be torn on. We shall have to wait and see whether or not it is a success and there's obviously still a lot of issues to be worked out. By the way GA is only to be used for geo locatoin.

[xman]

Ow the irony of it all. Have I got this wrong but is it the creators of links that enable XBMC, (pluggins), to find content someone else or some company has put on the net for all to share ad free or is it those that host the site that wants to put on ads and the creators of those links aren't happy?. Let me put it this way, no matter who it is, imagine the outrage if the creator of the content the pluggins find started putting ads on there net content and the said people wanting ads had no say in the matter?. My personal opinion is these people that supply the original content to the net are the only ones that morally have this option not those that write a neat bit of code to use others hard work that was supplied ad free.
Imagine if every build of XBMC so pluggins have a platform to actually run on come at a cost be it just to run a couple of ads from time to time after all there are a lot more lines of code to be written for XBMC than to make a pluggin. I would consider this point very long and hard to those making these decisions, you could be well setting some very bad precedences.

[BuZz]

@buzz: I do share some of your concerns regarding the ad system but if done correctly it could work out very well and would encourage more devlopers. As mentioned the Google Play store works very well, yes you can easily find hacked versions of apps that come without the ads but I generally keep the ad versions installed and I'm fairly sure the majority of users do. From chatting to the guys what I can see is that any developer wanting to use the new system will add some code to their addons that checks the time, then every 8 hours (only within that addon) the end user will receive an ad. Presumably as it's using XBMC it will either be a little popup or a youtube clip and both can easily be closed at the press of a button. By the way not every developer on the new forum will be using the ad delivery system, they are there because they've been forced away from their old home. Sorry for bringing all this up on your forum mate!

an ad every 8 hours is going to make no money, so the model will surely change once it starts. it is not comparable to google apps - we are primarily talking about python scripts that stream other people's content. it is a terrible idea (imho), and any plugin like this will not be welcome on the xbmc4xbox site/repository (there are no money generating adverts on any of the sites on this server too).

You don't need to apologise for bringing it up, forums are meant for discussion

[whufclee]

Fair enough mate, I completely respect your decision there. The test ad for the little black box went out to over 100,000 users so I would imagine it would generate a fair amount of money but then I don't really know all the ins and outs - I'm not a coder and won't be using the function myself. That said I'll be using the apps to support the developers. A user actually just came up with what I thought could be a good idea here.

[whufclee]

Update: Ok UmOuch has finally contacted me via youtube. The reason I used the new sig and avatar was to see if it would get him to respond in some way and whether or not that was a contributing factor I don't know but I've got my response so the banner and avatar have gone. I will replace with something more of a hippy free love and harmony style soon

For anyone interested it would appear I was banned for creating a short youtube video notifying users how to get in contact with banned members at the new site. This was made to help users out in a particular thread - users were asking the dev questions but he couldn't respond as he was banned and they didn't know! Anyway thankyou umouch for finally responding. There is a long way to go and whether or not any of these broken bridges can be mended remains to be seen as I feel very betrayed and I'm sure umouch isn't best pleased either but there is at least hope.

[Xphazer]

A virus bypass security measures, break into a system and ideally gain root /admin access. Then we can call that a virus.
A virus, even if you read the source code.. you might not even find it (ex: just an extra exploitable variable)

If deleting user content is a virus, then Apple and Amazon sent virus's to their users several times.

I am very picky about these words. People then are going to tell their friend "ohh a virus hited XBMC" then illiterate people will be "See, I told you, linux is not safe"
When the truth is, there was no virus, noone spent time writing a virus, they just pushed an update to their update system!

As I said, it was not ethical, but cannot be called a virus IMO. As it doesn't do any penetration or similar.

[Redneck9]

[VanZan]

@VanZan: I know there's no love lost between you and Mikey and I don't really want to get into the issue - it's between you two. I regularly chat to Mikey and I also speak to the guy at starstreams so I know all about what happened. You are of course entitled to your opinion but bare these facts in mind... Mikey is the only developer I've spoken to that is willing to try and keep his addons xbox compatible, he organised the recent xbmchub fest and paid for it OUT OF HIS OWN POCKET - an event that cost hundreds of pounds. The support he gives for his addons is second to none and when a request has been made for a new feature or completely new addon he's straight on the case even though he knows it's not something he'll ever use but it's good for the community. Please weigh up at all the facts when describing someone as "lowlife".

I know from my dealings with him before we fell out that he's a tricky so and so. He admitted to me himself that for the NTv addon he gets a cut of every subscription fee. Considering he's in bed with the people who used to run OMFGstreams and FSS (now masquerading under the guise of Offsidestreams, Kickoffstreams, Sportstreams (imaginative lot aren't they?) I dare say he's getting a slice of the action with them too. That crowd stole databases in the past. They screwed people over before and they'll do it again. Mikey had a private repo over at the hub which contained God knows what. I know there were smoothstreams and footy report addons. There must have been more juicy stuff in there considering the outrage when the news broke out and he took it down.

Mikey came up with the idea for ads. Mikey....putting the ad in addon! Glad to see Buzz and xman have the right idea. The only people justified to profit are the owners of the websites that the plugins are scraping. Not some chancer shoving out "pop ups" on the masses.

If he's such a benefactor of XBMC why has he caused a massive schism in the community then? I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him. I don't care that he organised a massive p*ss up.

[byron]

@ Redneck...that's hilarious

Nothing funny about the situation however, this all seems rather awkward for everyone involved.