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FBI Conducts Raids Over Half-Life 2 Source Theft
TheXerox writes "According to a recent weblog post, a San Francisco native had his house raided by the FBI last week, and 'lost upwards of 9 machines, and lots of misc equipment besides' in a seizure related to the theft of the Half-Life 2 source code from Valve Software." The scanned-in search warrant posted on the site indicates the FBI were looking for "...any IP addresses related to any of the Valve internal or external networks... Valve passwords and/or usernames... any and all items... related to Valve Software, Half-Life, Half-Life 2", and the Hungry Programmers page mentions that "...several Hungries were raided on January 14th by the FBI and Secret Service, and their computers seized."
full mirror inc. warrent here
Why is the secret service involved? Arent they only concerned with protecvting the president and fake currency?
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
It would really piss me off to lose my machines if I never did anything, I wonder how long it would be before you got them back and what kind of condition they would be in.
January 15, 2004
The whole surreal story
So at 6:30am on January 14th, I woke up to the doorbell buzzing. Not a short lived buzz. Someone had their thumb pressing the button and holding it there. "Fucking drunkard" I thought, and rolled over, intent on ignoring it. It then started a rythmic *buzz* *buzz* *buzz* *buzz*, over and over again. After about 5 minutes battling to get back to sleep, I gave up and got up. Put my pants on, grabbed my sweatshirt, and stumbled off toward the door.
As I walked down the steps I heard them talking to the nextdoor neighbor, asking him where the landlord lived. I reach the door just as the neighbor's door closes. I compose myself to deal with whatever is behind the door, and open it.
Immediately there's a flashlight in my eyes. "Are you Chris Toshok?" "Uh, yes" "Mr. Toshok, we're with the FBI. We have a warrant to search the premises." I looked down out of the glare of the flashlight and saw the FBI badge of the long haired blonde woman standing in front of me. I also saw two people behind her, bodies turned sideways so as to present less of a target. Guns drawn? It was too hard to tell really with the glare of the flashlight, but I'm assuming yes.
I mumbled something about turning on the light so I could see the warrant (pages 1 2 3 4 5)they'd thrust into my hands and turned and groped on the wall for the switch. They all tensed. The light came on, and I looked over the warrant for a second.
"Please come out here Mr. Toshok," and a hand on my arm pulling me onto the porch. Once I was out on the porch several agents started up the stairs. I said that my roommate was still asleep in bed. They asked his name, I said "Peter". They continued up the steps, yelling his name. "Peter, this is the FBI." "PETER" "PETER, are you awake? this is the FBI"
I didn't watch it happen but apparently Peter awoke, naked, to a doorway full of FBI agents with guns out, yelling at him to get up. He asked if he could get some clothes on. They said yes. He asked if they could turn on the light so he could see. So Peter got to get dressed under the watchful gaze of government employees. Must have been fun.
They took Peter to the back of the house, and took me back upstairs to the front of the house, and proceeded to start going through everything in my room and the office.
I was questioned by the FBI agent in charge and a Secret Service agent at length about the Hungry Programmers, people I used to live with, whether particular people had the capacity/knowledge to do what they were investigating, etc. During the questioning she says "Now we're going to take all your computers." She sees the look on my face and says "Yeah, this is going to be hard for you." I said "uh, when will I get them back?" She said it depends, that they'd try to have them all back as soon as possible, but it depends on if they find anything suspicious on them. If they found contraband (kiddie porn, talk of drugs, or stuff they were actually looking for), that particular computer would never be coming home.
After the questioning I basically sat in the front room on a folded futon mattress, with at least one agent with me at all times. Sometimes two. At one point I said I really needed to brush my teeth and the SS agent assigned to me at the time walked with me back to the bathroom and stood behind me watching me in the mirror as I brushed my teeth. On my way back down the hall I looked into my room and saw 3 FBI agents rifling through my belongings. One looking at the condoms and stickers in my nightstand, one going through my underwear/sock drawer, and one looking through my books.
After a lot more sitting in silence in that room, interspersed with tidbits of conversation (an fbi agent asking me about the guitars, talking about the piano lessons in his youth, and how he was kicked in the chest by a horse.) I must say, the SS agents were a lot nicer than the FBI agents. One in particular was pretty cool - we joked a lot about just how absurd the whole thing was
Just when I thought they would let it die down, due to it being a bit more personal and involved, it seems like they went in to full gear.
But I'm still a bit doubtful that ANY network admin wouldn't notice 11GB of traffic to an outside location on the network.
how else are they supposed to train their agents with the latest technology if it continues to be held past the release date!
This is like saying, "The murder victim's last name was Smith, and this guy has a reference to a Mr. Smith in his Rolodex. He must be guilty."
Sure, what the fuck ever. This is trivially defensible in court.
lost upwards of 9 machines
Um - how many machines did he lose? 1? 5? 8.5?
Like sex? Read and write about it! Indecent Blogging
FYI, Chris Toshok (toshok), the person who wrote up this experience is also one of the head programmers on Ximian's Evolution mail client.
...the raid on the Hungry Programmers was the result of a miscommunication between Valve and the FBI -- Valve had actually traced the breakin back to an ip address in Hungary.
(collective groan)
Thanks, thank you, I'll be here all week.
Rather than "FBI agents, acting under a warrant issued due to probable cause having been ascertained, ..."
welcome to slashdot.
It had something to do with the fact that Steve Jackson was producing a Cyberpunk game.
c hno/jackson/
More info:
http://www.boogieonline.com/revolution/express/te
http://www.sjgames.com/SS/
http://www.eff.org/Legal/Cases/SJG/
If Valve tries to make the claim in court that HL2 was postponed until April because of the source code theft, that will become fraud on their part. Until now it was just harmless marketing lies. The delay had little if anything to do with the code theft -- that was only a convenient excuse.
Someday I would like to see a game company create a game in an open way. They should have all their engine code out in the open so anybody could follow the progress and even contribute if they felt like it. They would not need to make up stuff about release dates because the public could easily find out the status of completion themselves. And if their source code gets stolen by other companies, they can just go all SCO on their asses. On the other hand, they can also make clear that if a hobbiest uses the engine code that they own the copyright. Smart game companies do that last part already.
All it will take is one brave company to revolutionize the industry. Happens all the time.
The FBI came with a blonde woman agent carrying the warrent and trying to be as nice as they can to a suspect. Let's face it, that's what this guy, and his entire group, appears to be right now.
You don't need to be proven guilty by any standard to become a suspect. To get a warrant, they do need to present something to a judge, but what that something is usually remains sealed. That's how the system works, there was a due process for taking his property.
So, the good news for him is so far that the FBI's just fishing on his machines right now. If they find what they're looking for, or anything else very illegal to have, then they'll be back with the cuffs.
Maybe its just Sierra in FBI jackets.
The evil has spread.
=)
I can just imagine some clueless FBI agent rifling through the poor guy's Rolodex and demanding that he tell them where his IP addresses are. "Sir, where do you keep your IP addresses sir?! This isn't a joke, son! You think this is funny?! Keep it up punk! You can laugh at the judge when we tell him that you wouldn't tell us where your IP addresses were!"
Will Half-Life have a special "FBI Raid" level when it is released? =)
And it still doesn't equate to not knowing what's going on in the world -- it just means somebody doesn't know how to spell. Duh.
How many times has Slashdot been approached by law enforcement agencies to obtain access to records or postings?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
In the future, if he's ever unemployed, that warrant will be a big ugly red mark that will deter employers from hiring him.
I knew someone whose ex-wife accused him of abuse because she hated him. He never came close to being convicted, but he hasn't been able to get a job since.
You don't have to be convicted to be branded a criminal.
~To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. -Yann Martel
If you are found innocent...
a) What countermeasures/damages can you persue
b) If your computers are for business use, can you sue for lost revenue?
c) If they find something illegal (who doesn't have a "hack for program x" or keygen etc), but it is found that they came after you mistakenly, are your computers still lost?
d) You got no card, how can you call to find out about your stuff?
e) 9 computers, decent chance one is a server. How about if the server was hacked (cmon, if they hack valve wouldn't they redirect through dummy servers)
When did a weblog become fact? I understand they had scanned documents, but I just get very nervous about allowing blogs to become sources of fact.
With multiple companies hoping IPv6 enabled home appliances will be in the "home of the future", will search warrents looking for Internet devices mean the feds will be seizing everything from your fridge, toaster, and can opener?
The debate over that ought to be interesting.
Wow, I have to say, that would be the absolute worst morning of my life if it was me, the kind of stress that could give a guy an ulcer. He seems to be handling things pretty well though which is good. Nobody wants the FBI and Secret Service Raiding their home, no matter what.
/. kind) is biting him in the ass. I don't really care if Valve was using Outlook, If i hang a bed sheet over my door, and you walk in and take my stuff, you're still breaking and entering, even if the bedsheet wasn't the most secure door I could have used.
However that said, and my condolences to his lost PCs, if he is resposible for stealing the HL2 code, he kinda did deserve it, because I for one am a little pissed about the delay, and if he's guilty I guess karma(and not the
"I am the Flail of God!" -Genghis Kahn
Oh, you meant done for them, not done to them; my mistake!
If Toshok is so concerned about what's being taken from his apartment, and he hasn't done anything wrong, then why does he leave during the search and go to a friends place to "spread the word"? Something doesn't add up there.
If I hadn't done anything wrong, I'd stick around to see what's being confiscated. It seems like this guy's first priority was to sound an alarm...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
root@loot:~# cd stolen_stuff/u ff# scp half_life2.tar.gz dood@hackr.kr:
root@loot:~/stolen_stuff# ls
windowssrc.tar.gz half_life2.tar.gz eletronic_votinghck.tar.gz
root@loot:~/stolen_st
dood@hackr.kr's password:
half_life2.tar.gz 100% 00:00
root@loot:~/stolen_stuff# rm -f half_life2.tar.gz
root@loot:~/stolen_stuff# ^D
logout
- no sig.
I Belive that now copying something is considered theft by law. I do not agree with this, but if they have now defined it as theft, they are legaly correct in that statement, even if theoricly they are not right.
I want to know why they seized his xbox controllers? How the fuck is that evidense?
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
In other threads, people have suggested that the Feds didn't understand how IP addresses work, and raided the wrong network. I suppose that's possible, but I think it unlikely, especially since they must know about the crack being traced to a user in Europe. It's more likely that they know or suspect that the HP guys have copies of the stolen source, and the raid is just a way to "send a message" to others who might consider downloading it.
Technically, computers get seized so the cops can gather evidence, which is supposed to lead to some kind of punishment if all the due process requirements are met. But as often as not, the seizure itself is the only punishment metted out, and is obviously meant as such. Which is pretty scary, when you consider your total lack of recourse when you are punished in this manner.
"Hi, Valve? Yeah, this is Chris Toshok. Yeah, I got no computers to play your next game on, you know? Not your problem you say? Just a sec... I'm adding a couple new obfuscated filters to Evolution..."
Anyone notice they took down his XP CD-KEY for his Dell laptop? That key is toast now!
You almost never get the shit back. Half the reason for only having $300 used eBay computers at your house/apt/dorm. You don't want them stealing your $3500 Alienware rig or the setup you just built with $1000 of parts from Pricewatch, or your shiny new Apple G5 or G4 TiBook.
I've been popped before. All because I had a fake CNN web page made, a few months before the 'CNN fake news generator' got popular. It wasn't even hosted on my home systems!
The FBI was waiting for me one day when I walked outside my apartment to go to work. They marched me right back upstairs. They asked me a few questions and took the following:
White box AMD 800mhz that I built from spare parts. Old Powermac 8600. Old Pentium II-233MHz.
They did not, however, take my mice/keyboard/monitors, they did take the Mac stuff though.
They also did not take every floppy disk and CDROM I had in the house. You always used to hear news stories with headlines like "OVer 5,000 disks siezed in piracy raid" in the early years of home computers.
As the agent was leaving, my roomates newer Compaq laptop caught his eye, but I told him that machine wasn't mine and he didn't question me.
They have you sign a bunch of crap, and they write down serial numbers, give you copies of everything...This was about 3 years ago too.
I called the FBI offices, sometimes once a month. They would never return my calls, and always were telling me things were transfered to another office, etc. Originally I was told that they would be done with my stuff in 6-8 weeks.
After a while, I figured no news was good news, and didn't want to even deal with them any more over $500 worth of computers.
Ironically, I had to help the FBI/Customs on a case they were working on, someone in our office was looking at kiddie porn from a work computer. Figure they'd be looking out for me but that's the government for you.
Now, on the other hand, your police departments are a little better. My friend had his computer missing for nearly 6 months, and when he got it back it was covered in identifcation stickers but it was pretty much the way it was when they took it.
Posting as AC, of course.
That's let them eat static. Idiot.
You're sure as hell not going to see something like this get presented by news outlets. Not sensational and it's just some geeks getting busted for hacking, afterall... Never mind that while due process might have been done, it may still be an unreasonable search and siezure of his property by virtue of the fact that they had little real worth to go on and used PATRIOT or something similar to rush a warrant through the courts. Since I don't know the whole story, I'm not going to venture a guess either way- but to ask me to think of it as fiction just because it's a blog is a bit much as well.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The comments are the amazing part to me. You'd think people savvy enough to have read this story would be bright enough to understand why they absolutely HAVE to take the computers, not sit there dicking around trying to pull hard drives out.
Here
Best Slashdot Co
Umm..it's hungry not Hungary.
At least that's what I got out of it. I thnk it's just a group of programmers not necessarily of the same racial background.
Okay, points for keeping his composure I guess, but no points whatsoever for intelligence. He seriously just wandered off to take a walk while they were going through his apartment?!
Folks? If this ever happens to you? CALL YOUR LAWYER. Not the next day, not the day after, but the instant you can convince them to let you get your hands on a phone. If you don't have a lawyer, call a friend that you trust to find you a lawyer.
It's all well and good that the raiders in this case were relatively polite and friendly, but once the legal system takes notice of you in this way, Mister Policeman is no longer your friend. They have a job to do, and that job is to put your ass in jail. If being nice to you helps them to do this, they'll be nice. If scaring you senseless helps them to do this, they'll do that too. But the fact remains: they are not paid to catch someone who they know for a fact is guilty; they are being paid to catch someone they can convince a District Attorney is guilty, and those are two very, very different things.
If you are ever in this situation, the only words that come out of your mouth when speaking to the feds should be "I'd like to call my attorney." His job is to keep you out of jail.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
reading these posts, there are two questions that have REALLY obvious answers. I'll give them anyway, since they seem to be stumping so many people.
cds: its just policy. One can make a burned cd look pressed if they really want to. Instead of wasting time inspecting each cd, just take them all. Fairly simple.
why he told friends: Some may be students, who have their school work on their systems, but won't see those systems for years if they get taken. Some may be have files of business importance - perhaps they were writing a program for a company, perhaps they have an extensive cvs repository sitting on a server. Perhaps its just business contacts, or hell - email archives.
There are a LOT of things that will screw up your life for months, if not years, if you suddenly lose it. Keep in mind that while you may make backups, those backups will be taken as well. Offsite backups even will be, if they know about them (which more and more lately, they will know).
Think about what would happen if all of your computers, backups, media, and etc all disappeared in an instant. If you're 100% innocent, it will still take a couple of years to get things back. In our tech-dependent world, that's a long time to be in hell for no reason.
a law must be enacted where computers can not be held for a certain period of time (5 business days) unless charges are brought up against the owner. the 5 days would give the confiscator enough time to copy the hard drives on the machines. if not, why should the citizen be responsible for the time it takes the secret service / fbi to analyze the contents of a hard drive. this kind of reminds me of the ibm sco case.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
"Well, officer, the usb key *was* plugged into the computer when you confuscated it, so I guess you must have it somewhere. What? No, sorry, that was the only copy..."
do not read this line twice.
The exact address is blacked out in these scans, but if you have your monitor calibrated properly, you can see the censored parts of page 3 shining through in page 2. Of course on uncalibrated monitors, which they presumably used to scan these documents, you only see white.
:-)
Another reason to calibrate your monitors before creating stuff that you publish
I was amused to see numerous "move to Canada" suggestions, as well as "America is a police state" warnings provided to this person in comments relating to this person's allegations as printed on the person's web site. Evidently I was misinformed when told that Canada, and, indeed, every civilized nation on earth, has prisons full of convicts who got there as a result of being arrested by the police, including some who were convicted in trials by the weight of evidence seized with search warrants.
I'm in debt to those authentically brainy people who've set me straight about Canada, reminding me that Canada has no laws, no prisons, no convicts, no courts or trials, no police, and of course...no such thing as search warrants. And I guess the same is true of other European nations whose citizens reacted with shock and horror at this person's account, because like Canada, those nations, too, have no laws to break, no courts to convict, and of course no police forces to serve search warrants, not to mention no judges to sign such a warrant even if such a thing was possible in those countries. Yes, thanks to all of the "big brains" out there who have enlightened me in my ignorance. Naturally, if you hail from a country with no laws and no police and no search warrants, such a tale would have to inspire nothing short of dread and terror and a certain specter of a "police state."
And, too, I have to bow to the indisputable logic of those who insist that Valve has no moral right whatever to be incensed that its servers were broken into and its source code stolen--rather, as these people most brilliantly postulate for my poor benefit, Valve would be better served by throwing a party for the hackers, congratulating them an a job well done, and even, possibly, mailing them a big fat check for the service these unselfish, altruistic hackers have done them. How foolish of me to think it natural to want to involve the police when one's personal property is stolen--how foolish, indeed. Double foolish, really, but what can one expect from a poor underling such as I who has been raised in a country with laws, prisons, crimes, and search warrants? Since other countries, like Canada, have no need for such primitive mechanisms, it's no wonder I thought of this issue as I originally did. Woe is me.
But, to tell you the absolute truth, until I see some independent corroboration of the events alleged to have taken place, I must wonder if...
(a) Such alleged events ever occurred
(b) Such events occurred for the purpose this person has alleged
Even though I am not all that bright, really, as you can tell from my misapprehensions as to other countries having laws and prisons and search warrants, it nevertheless seems to me that...
(1) It is a simple thing to manufacture, or change, such "search warrants," using commonly available programs such as Photoshop
(2) It would be a simple thing to simply add "Valve" to a search warrant issued for another purpose, such as some kind of credit card fraud involving the use of computers
It occurs to me that this person might have had data belonging to other people on his machines prior to seizure, and that the "Valve" story is simply that--a story contrived, with the aid of Photoshop or something like it, to explain to his friends why their data, if not some of their computers, have been seized by the authorities.
Gosh, sometimes it's just so hard to think, and my head hurts...:) But it also occurs to me that possibly, just possibly, it might not always be a good idea to believe everything one sees printed on the Internet. Yea, right--what could I possibly know?...:)
they've developed a mobile data forensics lab where technicians download your harddrives, copy your CDs and everything else to their own systems and then return the equipment to you. The process takes time, obviously, but the van is loaded with equipment.
news story about it
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