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Old 15-03-21, 18:26   #1
LuckyEdge10
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Exclamation XNAaraL is stealing private information through XNALara

Hello everyone. I recently came across this video and wanted to ask if this is true or if we have more information about it.

(The end of the thread title is supposed to have a question mark, since it's not something that is actually confirmed)

XNALara 2.0 exists since 10+ years now and it's weird that I never saw anyone talking about this.

Here's the video by mariokart64n:


Last edited by LuckyEdge10; 15-03-21 at 19:33.
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Old 15-03-21, 18:57   #2
TR-Freak
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Please don't spread false information. Inspecting a Hex representation of a file is stupid. If you inspect Blender files, 3Ds Max files or even TRLE project files you will notice that they also store paths to files. It has nothing to do with stealing data, more like bad programming.
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Old 15-03-21, 19:08   #3
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TR-Freak View Post
Please don't spread false information. Inspecting a Hex representation of a file is stupid. If you inspect Blender files, 3Ds Max files or even TRLE project files you will notice that they also store paths to files. It has nothing to do with stealing data, more like bad programming.
Hmmm...

If this really is false information, then I sincerely apologize. But there are some things that are not quite clear.

The .xps format is basically identical to the .mesh format by Dusan except it adds the path to the file in the header, then a bunch of zeros, and then even adds random stuff to the geometry data so that it's not readable from Dusan's version of XNALara. Why develop a different format to do this? Unknown reason.
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Old 15-03-21, 19:13   #4
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That "Random garbage" is most likely additional geometry data. Remember that XPS allows scaling and translation of bones unlike original XNALara format. There are also additional data like objects etc.
The many zero bytes are explained to properly distinguish between header and data.
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Old 15-03-21, 19:35   #5
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Alright I edited the content of the post because I gave everything I saw in the video for granted thinking that what the video says is right in everything, but it might not be true ^-^'

Thanks for answering TR-Freak!
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Old 15-03-21, 20:16   #6
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To be honest, I don't think XNAaraL is actively trying to steal anyone's personal info. However, his version of XNALara has always been a poor derivative of Dusan's work, as this video indeed shows us.

What's truly abominable in this situation is forcing a fracture in the community, and being so petty about it.

I don't care as much about him obfuscating mesh formats in the most clumsy way possible, retaining miscellaneous information about your PC as a by-product of not knowing how to code properly...

Which, if you have your social security number as your desktop username, that's your problem.

Last edited by tomblover; 15-03-21 at 20:20.
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Old 17-03-21, 03:14   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tomblover View Post
.....I don't care as much about him obfuscating mesh formats in the most clumsy way possible, retaining miscellaneous information about your PC as a by-product of not knowing how to code properly...

Which, if you have your social security number as your desktop username, that's your problem.
Most people using computers, would maybe use their first name as the user name, but that would give you no real information. For example my user name is Perry, but that is not even my real name, so they are not going to get $1,000,000 out of me in a hurry, even if i had that amount of cash
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Old 17-03-21, 16:47   #8
not again!
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nvm - on second thought, let's not get into that

Last edited by not again!; 17-03-21 at 20:37.
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Old 23-03-21, 17:42   #9
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Interesting video. My opinions:

First of all, for context, I'm the author of GLLara, which is a clone of XNALara for Mac OS X (completely open source). XNAaraL helped me a lot with figuring things out when I was writing it and was very friendly, so I'm not gonna be mean here or comment on the drama and such.

I agree with the video when it says that this format is dead and people should learn Blender. This is true for my GLLara as well (well, technically that community was never alive to begin with, I think I had at most five users). Only problem is that the only way to learn Blender is through Youtube videos, and I hate learning software through online tutorials…

I also think the XPS additions don't really add value. But I don't think they're as dangerous as it's made out here. For one, if you never publish the file anywhere, nobody will ever see any of the data. If you only use existing models and don't edit and save them, none of this will matter, because it won't randomly change files you already have. It is very much not a virus. And while I think files shouldn't share your computer host name, it's not like they can directly hack you with that.

As for the "random arithmetic in the geometry section", I don't know what this guy means by that. The geometry section contains some very ordered data, and some data that looks random at first - but that has always been the case, even in the original Dusan version.

I think the "it's stealing information from you!!!1one" stuff is overblown. Should the files include that information? No, but I don't think it's that harmful.
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Old 28-03-21, 10:22   #10
XNAaraL
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cochrane View Post
... but I don't think it's that harmful.
Mostly Harmless

The answer to life, the universe, and everything. is 42


Last edited by XNAaraL; 28-03-21 at 12:14.
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