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The Trap Set By the FBI For Half Life 2 Hacker
eldavojohn writes "You might remember the tiny news that Half Life 2 source code was leaked in 2003 ... it is the 6th most visited Slashdot story with over one kilocomment. Well, did anything happen to the source of the leak, the German hacker Axel 'Ago' Gembe? Wired is reporting he was offered a job interview so that Valve could get him into the US and bag him for charges. It's not the first time the FBI tried this trick: 'The same Seattle FBI office had successfully used an identical gambit in 2001, when they created a fake startup company called Invita, and lured two known Russian hackers to the US for a job interview, where they were arrested.'"
Really, quite old news. This was reported on right after it happened. If I remember right though, Gabe claimed that they had succeeded in tricking the hacker. They did speak with him on the phone
The group named in the article is "myg0t" not "mygot." They developed some of the first hacks for Counter-Strike (the original). They became so well known in game as cheaters that a lot of servers are set to automatically kick any playing wearing their tag.
Do not go somewhere where I'm wanted. Stay in the countries where there are NO warrants for my arrests.
Why not?
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
that's just cruel.
Work Safe Porn
depends ...
Is a kilocomment 1000 or 1024 comments ?!?
If i am supposed to slow down...about telling me how slow
One of my favorite law stories ever:
The judges in the small county I used to work in (Charles County, MD) were notoriously tough on cocaine dealers. The neighboring jurisdiction was so overwhemled with drugs that drug dealers in that county were typically given much lighter sentences. The disparity was so great that smart dealers refused to deal in Charles County. Instead, they would arrange deals next to the border without actually ever crossing into Charles Co.
So when the Charles County Sheriff's Office wanted to mount a major drug sting, they moved the "Welcome to Charles County" sign back a hundred feet or so, and would arrange deals just across the border. We put away a lot of bad people for a long time. Brilliant.
Um... Yeah. I have no problem with this.
From wikipedia: "Entrapment is the act of a law enforcement agent in inducing a person to commit an offence which the person would not have, or was unlikely to have, otherwise committed."
This is not a case of entrapment because the person was not induced to commit an offense. He was induced to come to the country after the offense was committed.
A good example of entrapment would be if the FBI tricked him in to coming in the country and then arrested him for coming in to the country illegally (invalid visa or some such).
If you are wanted for a crime in some country, you should avoid:
1) Going to that country
2) Going to countries with extradition agreements with that country
If you are dumb enough to go to the country, you deserve to be arrested.
How would I feel if someone tricked dumb American criminals into getting arrested? Pretty good. We could use less criminals on the streets. Feel free.
This isn't exactly a civil rights issue.
When we were getting very close to releasing Half-Life 1 (less than a week or so), we found there were already some projects that we needed to start working on, but we couldn't risk checking in code to the shipping version of the game. At that point we forked off the code in VSS to be both $/Goldsrc and /$Src. Over the next few years, we used these terms internally as "Goldsource" and "Source". At least initially, the Goldsrc branch of code referred to the codebase that was currently released, and Src referred to the next set of more risky technology that we were working on. When it came down to show Half-Life 2 for the first time at E3, it was part of our internal communication to refer to the "Source" engine vs. the "Goldsource" engine, and the name stuck.
If the perp is stupid enough to travel to a country where he's wanted, that's evolution in action.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The damage has already been done? Huh? You are aware that in most cases arrests occur after the commission of a crime, right?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
There's a difference between a Kilobyte(1000) and a Kibibyte. (1024)
The Kibibyte was coined to distinguish the former from the latter.
For more information, please refer to this chart: http://xkcd.com/394/
Haha, you're funny. On the whole, drug users do commit more crimes than non-drug users. I'll give you that. On the other hand, poor people commit more crimes than rich people. Young people commit more crimes than old people. Punish the crime and treat the addict. Don't ignore illegal drug trafficking, regulate it. Drug use and sale in and of itself should not be a crime.
"A boat's a boat, but the mystery box could be anything.
It could even be a boat!"
Yeah, as a taxpayer, I'm really upset too when the police waste money trying to arrest a murderer after the event. I mean, the victim's already dead, so they're wasting money trying to protect him. If someone releases a book about the murder, then follow the money. Otherwise, big deal.
In case the previous paragraph didn't drip enough sarcasm in your direction, let's try this another way. It's the job of the police to investigate crimes that have occurred and to arrest those that they have reasonable grounds to believe are guilty. In this case, police have reasonable grounds to arrest him on suspicion of having committed a crime (some variant of breaking into a computer). What does it matter how much or how little he profited from the crime? That's for the judge to take into account, not the police.
Except it's not fraud, and it's not illegal. What the government did, arresting a foreign criminal who committed a crime in the USA, is perfectly legal. How they got him to enter into the USA, by setting up a fake job interview, is also perfectly legal. I can set up fake job interviews with as many people as I want. So can the feds. It's not against the law.
But what most people seem to be missing is the sheer stupidity of the criminal. If a company I had hacked into, stolen source code from, and embarrassed publicly suddenly invited me to their corporate HQ in a foreign country, I would be a weee bit suspcious.
I'm from the USA. What's the conversion between kilocomments and shit-tons? Google conversions doesn't seem to have it. I find it odd that they will happily do furlongs per fortnight but don't have this...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
At the very least advertising a non-existent job should be punishable under "false advertising" laws.
False advertising laws are in place to protect consumers from abuse. Advertising a job interview is not the same as advertising a product. It's perfectly legal for me to invite as many people as I want to my office for an interview -- and no job need exist for me to do that. I can interview them all, get all their resumes, and never follow up with a single one of them. It's not illegal, nor should it be. After all, if it were illegal, why would it be illegal? Have I deprived anyone of life, liberty, or property? I have not. If people came and wasted their time, they did so voluntarily.
You need to get out of this mindset that something "ought to be illegal" just because you don't like it.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
However, I'm sure other tax payers, such as corporations that own source code, would lobby to keep it.
Waitaminute. It's not being a taxpayer that gives someone a stake in the government - it's being a citizen, and having a vote. That means that a lifelong welfare recipient and a survivalist hermit, neither of whom pay a dollar of tax in their lives, have a representative in Washington who is supposed to look out for their interests and listen to their concerns. A corporation, regardless of how much tax it pays, is not supposed to have such representation.
Sorry for jumping on you here, but I think that the way your post is expressed - implying that a corporate taxpayer deserves representation - is a dangerous subversion of democracy.
What I don't understand is why we allowed some asshole RAM and HDD manufacturers to steal our word?
Speaking as someone who grew up learning that "kilo-" means 1000, what I don't understand why we allowed some asshole CS people to steal our prefix?
Sorry for jumping on you here, but I think that the way your post is expressed - implying that a corporate taxpayer deserves representation - is a dangerous subversion of democracy.
It's a dangerous subversion of democracy, but it's also the real situation in the US(1). The CEO of Chrysler has as much voting power of a single welfare recipient. To whom do you think elected officials listen?
Besides, while corporations don't have votes, they do have employees. I'd be reluctant to vote for a candidate whose policies will hurt IBM. When your employer suffers, you usually suffer too.
(1) Arguably, it's also the system working as designed. Many of thhe founding fathers were scared of democracy, and much preferred an aristocratic republic on the Roman model.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
So by your reasoning, you should be able to be imprisoned by the chinese government if you watch (by chinese government deemed) illegal content on a website that's hosted on a server in China. Even though the content of the website is perfectly legal in the country where you are browsing in? No? Didn't think so... This type of entrapment is a slippery slope.
Nihil in publicum sputa.
OK, MDMA was given to people as a mood elevator in the 70s and 80s.
MDMA is a methamphetamine derived chemical. There is (if memory serves me well enough) either 2 or 3 differences in the chain.
They also DID prescribe methamphetamine as a mood elevator, as well as a brochiodilator.
Methamphetamine was given to our troops in Viet Nam. A good friend of mine actually has a bottle of it (the empty bottle, the contents where LONG ago consumed). His argument for having it is: I'm a methamphetamine addict. I had never touched it, nor heard of it, until Viet Nam. My government gave me pretty much all I wanted then. So, they gave me the FUCKING habit. Should I ever be arrested, this is a DAMNING piece of evidence. I don't think he would do very well, but it still serves as evidence of Methamphetamine ABuse from our government in the 60s / 70s.
Matter of fact, Methamphetamine is STILL legally prescribed in the United States. It's used for SEVERE obesity as well as narcolepsy. VERY few people get it for ADD/HD as well.
Cocaine? Yup, we have that as well. Most opthamology shops set up for surgery (not your basic eyeglasses plus type place, or julios lasic clinic, but REAL eye surgeons), they get Cocaine. It's one of, if not the only anesthetic used IN the eyeball.
Coca Cola ALSO STILL uses Coca in their drink. The Coca BASE (which is cocaine, after refining) is whisked away for no apparent reason (I'd say, more than likely, for the production of legal cocaine, for eye dox, but I'm sure they don't say for security reasons) is brought to the states. Matter of fact, Coca Cola Bottling is the BIGGEST single purchaser of Coca in the world.
Care to anonymously talk about this some more? I tend to know a bit more than the average idiot about drugs, drug use, pharmacology, and the such. Growing up in one of the largest methamphetamine production towns in the world during the 80s kinda does that for ya.
--Toll_Free