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Phatbot Trojan Suspect Linked To Half-Life 2 Code Theft?

Posted by simoniker on from the uh-oh dept.

Thanks to Gamers With Jobs for its story claiming possible links between the theft of the Half-Life 2 code and the Phatbot trojan writer, following the arrest of the alleged Phatbot creator in Germany last week, as the site claims, regarding "Axel G., 21 years old and known under the nick 'Ago'", that "German IT news mag Heise.de did some investigation [German-language link] and according to their research Axel G. probably also was heavily involved in the Half-Life 2 code theft that happened more than 7 months ago", pointing particularly to an IRC log, available on a Half-Life 2 leak page since late last year, which has Ago allegedly saying "[Download speed] suxx, especially from valve to germany... i coded myself my own sourcesafe client to get it at full speed... i only used a simple null-session to a pc in valves net, that wasnt directly controlled by valve."

8 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Was the code actually stolen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Did he actually steal the code? Or did he duplicate it in an authorized fashion, leaving all original copies intact? If it is the former, this is unusual. If it is the latter, there is no way that theft occured (it's just unwanted duplication).

    1. Re:Was the code actually stolen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Give me a break, of course it was stolen. He was not authorized to copy the source code. And it's not akin to someone taking a picture of the Mona Lisa, it would be more like someone taking a picture of blueprints to an automobile. That would let them build the same product, even though it is clearly IP for the original owners.

    2. Re:Was the code actually stolen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Let me think. You find out that someone had access over weeks to your code. Remember that kernel exploit they tried to sneak in the other day by changing a == to a =? Do you have an idea what several weeks of source access can do?

      I agree that Valve used the code theft to cover up their broken releasedate promise, but even if the ocde would have done, it would have taken several month of serious code audits to enure things are is no trojan horse somewhere in the code

  2. People actually use SourceSafe? by Nasarius · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Incredible. Even CVS works better than that particular piece of MS garbage.

    --
    LOAD "SIG",8,1
  3. Logs of private channels by 0x0d0a · · Score: 3, Insightful

    <Unknown__> hostmask of Ago on the 11th of october: frb9-d9bb4a51.pool.mediaWays.net
    <Unknown__> earlier this week
    <Unknown__> in a private channel....
    <Unknown__> the person having access to the beta, sources and other released stuff

    You know, it sounds as if they could have dug this up from IRC server logs. Now, obviously it's quite *possible* to log all channels on an IRC server (it still boggles the mind that IRC clients don't have encryption support as standard), but I wasn't actually aware that this was being actively done -- and it would have to be in order to snag this from a minor, private channel well in advance of anyone knowing who the responsible parties might be.

    That's a bit Orwellian.

    I've never actually looked up whether AOL's privacy policy says anything that would keep them from logging all ICQs/AIM messages, but that could be quite a valuable storehouse of information as well. The only mainstream IM protocol that I know of where clients support end-to-end encryption as standard is Jabber.

    --
    May we never see th
    1. Re:Logs of private channels by asdfman2000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Chances are he was IN the channel at the time. And many IRC clients will log EVERYTHING.

  4. Re:Of course it wasn't stolen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    How about someone breaks into your house and photographs everything you have, photocopies every bit of paper, writes down all the phone numbers you have on your phone and takes a copy of everything on your computers. Nothing physical would be taken, only copies of information.

    Maybe not theft, but I bet you'd feel pretty lousy.

  5. Re:Of course it wasn't stolen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It has been my experience that the only people who spend a lot of time arguing "theft" vs. "copying" vs. "taking" are whiny little pedants who think that their astonishing wordplay will distract the world from the fact that they're a) just to cheap to pay for music or software, and b) too much of a pussy to say "I steal."

    Not that I'm talking about you or anything...