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

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."

Comments

Hmm...

[0x0d0a]

Let me guess, he also blew up the World Trade Center?

Re:Hmm...

[irokitt]

Not only that, but authorities suspect that he may have killed Kenny. Gifs at eleven.

People actually use SourceSafe?

[Nasarius]

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

Re:People actually use SourceSafe?

[bigbigbison]

Well, the founders of valve did used to work at Microsoft, so they probably either felt loyalty to their old employer, or had used it at MS and were used to it.

Re:People actually use SourceSafe?

[HalfFlat]

Even Microsoft don't use SourceSafe.

It's that bad.

Re:People actually use SourceSafe?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was that modded funny? It's true! When I was there, any self-respecting group used SLM (Source Library Manager), aka "Slime". Only a few random groups in consumer division used VSS.

Logs of private channels

[0x0d0a]

<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.

Re:Logs of private channels

[asdfman2000]

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

Re:Logs of private channels

[nexex]

aim has supported encryption for about a year

ignore the bit about the cost, its free...

Bash.org?

[Anonymous Coward]

<Ago> i only used a simple null-session to a pc in valves net, that wasnt directly controlled by valve
<Ago> then I got caught by the german police, and here I am in this prison.
<Ago> Crap guys, gotta go, they need me again in the shower-room.
*Ago is now known as Ago|sodomy

Re:Was the code actually stolen?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Of course it wasn't stolen

[Leffe]

The code is of course copyrighted, meaning that he broke international copyright laws. That is kind of illegal.

Re:Of course it wasn't stolen

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Was the code actually stolen?

[oskillator]

Seriously. I'm really at a loss to why Valve blamed the delays on the code theft. Valve didn't actually lose anything -- even if the cracker had trashed their code repository, they could've just grabbed the code from Kazaa.

Re:You are missing the obvious

[cujo_1111]

Isn't murder the act of taking one's life and not returning it? That is theft in my book :)

Re:You are missing the obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't murder the act of taking one's life and not returning it?

Yes, but it was only half of a life, not an entire one. Also, half life 2's official logo has the 2 written as a power. So, one could argue that it was only a quarter of a life that was taken.

Re:Was the code actually stolen?

[Spleener12]

It's not that they lost the code, it's that the fact that the code is availible makes it really easy for people to make cheats for HL2 and any mods, so they now have to re-write an assload of protocols in order to prevent this.

I have no doubt in my mind that they're also using this delay to add some new features/areas/nifty stuff, tho.

Re:Was the code actually stolen?

[Anonymous Coward]

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