I was thinking about this a little and this may be a dumb idea, but is it possible that you could use a converter script and dump it into a different forum software? That might let you go "around" the security a little. I think that I still have some licenses for VB and XF from that time frame that you would be welcome to use, and I probably have a copy of the install files somewhere. I know that converting between IPB and VB was pretty common. I used to have some contacts in the forum admin world who did a lot of rebuilding / combining of forums and I could try to reach out and see if one of them might have some other suggestions, if you think that might be helpful.