Decoding a commercial plugin or theme to bypass its licensing check (known as "nulling") so you can distribute or use it without paying the original creator is a direct violation of copyright law.
Some open-source decompilers (like DePHP or old forks of php-uproot ) can partially reverse older IonCube versions (like IonCube 4 or 5 running on PHP 5.x). These tools completely fail against IonCube 13 because they cannot parse the modern abstract syntax trees (AST) of PHP 8. Technical Obstacles to Reverse Engineering Ioncube 13 Decoder
Highly skilled security researchers can sometimes reverse-engineer specific files by dumping PHP opcodes from server memory during runtime. However, this is a tedious, manual process. The resulting code often lacks original variable names, comments, and proper formatting, requiring hours of manual reconstruction to make it functional. The Hidden Dangers of Online IonCube Decoders Decoding a commercial plugin or theme to bypass