Hacker Releases 1.7TB Treasure Trove of Gaming Info

mvar writes "According to Kotaku, a hacker named SuperDaeE who breached multiple gaming companies (Valve, Sony, MS to name a few) has released a 1.7TB treasure trove file for download. The file which contains source code for older titles plus development kits for the PS4 and Xbox One consoles, is encrypted and SuperDaeE claims that it is his insurance in case he gets arrested."

Comments

Insurance Policy?

[Orestesx]

Right...cause if he gets in trouble, blackmail will surely get him out of it.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol. came her to say this

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Listen up, world! I've got evidence that the senator's been holding a human trafficking and slavery ring in the #7 warehouse on the docks, as well as papers showing the exact schedules of these activities and how they've helped his campaigns! And here's all of that evidence for download! I'm using this as insurance against him arresting me for my breaking and entering into his office to get this information!"
"So... how is this insurance?"
"Because if he tries to arrest me, I'll release all the information to the world!"
"But you just did that."
"Of course I did! That way he knows I'm not bluffing! If he tries something stupid, I'll release it all again! So you see, Senator, I hold all the cards!"

Re:Insurance Policy?

[jellomizer]

Besides that, that is a big So What in data.

Ok Source code for OLD GAMES, So games that have already been pirated and hacked, but lets the the source so we could compile it before we play it.
SDK, that would be handy, if only you wanted to be licensed with the gaming company, to you know distribute your code. Even OSS projects would avoid it as to not get sued for using a pirated SDK.

So when he gets arrested for hacking, they will just add Pirating to the list too. Good thinking!

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for reference, if you look at the summary you'll see that what he's released is that trove... encrypted. The idea is that if he gets arrested, he yells out the passphrase, but until then this might as well be 1.7TiB of /dev/random

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you know what encryption is?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

why release it in the first place then?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[spiffmastercow]

Just for reference, if you look at the summary you'll see that what he's released is that trove... encrypted. The idea is that if he gets arrested, he yells out the passphrase, but until then this might as well be 1.7TiB of /dev/random

My guess is it's 1.7GB of /dev/random anyway.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[firex726]

So neither we nor the companies may even know the extent of what he has.
Kinda shitty plan on his part it seems.

And even then, why release it to begin with?
Had he kept quiet he might never have been caught, by putting it out there he all but guaranteed his arrest.

Also what good is the Dev SW for a PS4 or XBone without the hardware? We already know what the HW will be like, does anyone give a shit what SW the consoles will use? The people who could make use of it, developers; already have their Dev kits in hand.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[lbmouse]

It might help determine how rapey his cellmate will be.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[someone1234]

So he is safe. Released, the info gets spread on the interweb. No way to destroy it.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[dantotheman]

I wonder if the fact that these new consoles will be running on x86 processors will come into play here...

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Repeated 1024 times to account for the 1.7TiB of data?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

He could privately send the key to the relevant parties so they can see what the data is (duh)

Re:Insurance Policy?

[tattood]

Sure, the game companies may not want this released, but does the FBI care? If they investigate, and find and arrest the hacker, it's up to the D.A. whether or not to prosecute, not the game companies. This seems like a worthless insurance policy/blackmail, because the people going after him are unaffected by the action of him releasing the encryption key.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The people who could make use of it, developers; already have their Dev kits in hand.

Well, yes, that's just the professional, large-company developers though. I'd have to imagine that homebrewers/the warez scene/crackers/etc would also be interested in having access to those dev kits for their own, non-MS/Sony-sanctioned purposes.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[firex726]

Sure, but Dev kits are also much more open than a release console. They need to be to let the Dev run unsigned code of their own while it's being made; any exploits you may find in this code may not be usable in the final product; especially since the consoles are possibly still being made.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So he/she encourage others to download it and then rat him out so to get the password?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[nedlohs]

Because yelling a passphrase is easier than yelling out 1.7TB of data on the spot?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[firex726]

Except for those consoles, the Dev kits are both HARDWARE and software.
Any exploit the "scene" may find may not be usable at launch. Software dev kits are purposely made to be more open.

> Hey look, I can run whatever code I want without having it signed!

Yea, you can bet after this last gen Sony and MS will require all the code to be signed.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Minwee]

Because yelling a passphrase is easier than yelling out 1.7TB of data on the spot?

They're trashing our rights, man! They're trashing the flow of data! Hack the planet!

Re:Insurance Policy?

[firex726]

Which would be even worse for him, since right now it's only a threat with no confirmation, if he thought doing that gives MS and Sony access to each other's copyrighted material, he'll be fucked.

And even then, so what? He's got a lot of proprietary SW that requires proprietary HW with it to be usable. Unless he's going to handout the PS4 and XBone hardware dev kits too.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So that everyone who wants to help him out can grab a copy and hold onto it for him -- its like having millions of potential accomplices.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd mod you up again if I could.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[jzilla]

Nah maybe /dev/urandom but 1.7 TiB of /dev/random would take forever.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[FatdogHaiku]

Almost.
Does the FBI work through U. S. Attorneys?
Yes. Although the FBI is responsible for investigating possible violations of federal law, the FBI does not give an opinion or decide if an individual will be prosecuted. The federal prosecutors employed by the Department of Justice or the U.S. Attorneys offices are responsible for making this decision and for conducting the prosecution of the case.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/faqs

Local stuff is handled by a D.A. (District Attorney) or City. County, or State Prosecutor.

I agree his "insurance policy is useless... It's akin to soaking himself in a flammable liquid and threatening to light it. All he can do by releasing the decryption key is provide more evidence against himself.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI often gets involved after a corporation leans on them.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

He has a Beowulf cluster of geiger counters!

Re:Insurance Policy?

[MMC Monster]

Or his personal porn collection.

Why back it up if you can get the world to do it?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[poofmeisterp]

Must post the obligatory reply:

"I didn't do it."

Re:Insurance Policy?

[DrXym]

Safe how? It sounds like he is being charged for possession of kiddy porn among other things. He'll be tried and convicted regardless of his "threat" (which in itself is a offence) and if he's fucking stupid enough to release the key he can expect to receive fresh charges on top since he has just incriminated himself. So he'll probably go from 3-5 years up to 10+ years. Doubtless all sentencing to be served consecutively. Great plan that.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[DrXym]

And in doing so open himself up to charges of hacking, blackmail, extortion, wire fraud and anything else they can pin on him. It's a stupid plan.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[SuricouRaven]

Depends if his spitefulness outweighs his long-term planning - if he gets a long enough sentence to effectively ruin his life, revenge is going to look very appealing indeed. He also said that his 'inability to access a computer' would release the passphrase, suggesting he is paranoid enough to have a dead-man's-handle - either tucked away on a server no-one knows about, or a few friends with orders to release it if he goes out of contact.

The charges are so diverse they look suspiciously like the result of a trawling - someone in law enforcement decided he has to go down and did a through rummage through his home and computers to hunt of any useful dirt they could charge him for. That means his blackmail ploy isn't going to work: While it could convince game companies to back down from the path of mutual destruction, a prosecutor would have little to lose from the leak and a lot to lose politically if seen to be giving in to the demands of criminals. Espicially now the kiddie porn card has been played - even if, as is more likely than not, it's nothing but a naked selfie his girlfriend sent him. He is seventeen.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 1.7 GB of /dev/random. All he needs to do is release the correct one-time pad!

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Zencyde]

I'm under the impression that he has something automatically set up to yell the passphrase for him if he isn't there to stop it once every arbitrary schedule of time. I imagine that this is some sort of timer system, possibly set on a weekly basis. Easier to guarantee it working as this situation, in which he is behind bars, would be expected. If he's as smart as he comes off, he even has this trigger set across multiple locations through sources that he's accessed only anonymously. He could even have a botnet set to pull this trigger for him, as botnets seem to be super popular in some circles.

Did he do this? I don't know. But he likely knows enough about the world to know that he'd have to to have any hope of his plan working. I don't imagine he expects to save himself with this.

It reminds me of this movie/show I saw a long time ago, in which a trigger was tied to this person's heartbeat. Should his heart stop, something catastrophic was to happen. Sort of a guarantee that people would want him alive. It's always tied to something beyond the control of everyone else. Him yelling a passphrase? Easily within the control of the prison system. Computers yelling out a passphrase for him? Not worth the resources to try to stop.

Yes, this is all conjecture. But it would work a little better than what you suggested, and I'm sure this guy knows that.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[interval1066]

whatever. I think the dude is funny as hell. I hope they don't murder him.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/538/

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

And even then, why release it to begin with?
Had he kept quiet he might never have been caught, by putting it out there he all but guaranteed his arrest.

From TFA he's already been arrested and charged on several unrelated crimes and is out on bail. My guess is he's a troubled teen who's guilty as charged, isn't planning to show up in court, and thinks this'll stop the cops from coming after him (fat chance).

Re:Insurance Policy?

[DrXym]

Well if it was just his girlfriend he'd be even dumber since they court would probably go easy on him. They don't go so easy on people who attempt to subvert justice. If he went through with his grand plan he'd be stewing in jail long after anyone else gave a damn.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[maxwell demon]

Just for reference, if you look at the summary you'll see that what he's released is that trove... encrypted. The idea is that if he gets arrested, he yells out the passphrase, but until then this might as well be 1.7TiB of /dev/random

For all we know, it might indeed just be 1.7TB of /dev/random.

BTW, was there any hint that the file size is closer to 1.7*2^40 bytes than to 1.7*10^12 bytes, or do you just blindly add the "i" to "TB" whether it makes sense or not?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[maxwell demon]

So all those who download the file actually download kiddy porn, and when the encryption key gets released, they get into much bigger trouble than the gaming companies could ever cause them? Well, that would be an interesting twist. ;-)

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the Simpsons before it was recycling its own jokes.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

An off-brand Asian video game company might decide that it's worth $500 (for the hit) to find out.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Luckyo]

Such a case would have game companies driving it. If game companies are extremely interested in this package not getting decrypted by everyone, they will not make crime reports, they will stall their help for any ongoing cases and may even ask authorities to drop the case entirely.

It's not so much blackmail as holding a hostage.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It reminds me of this movie/show I saw a long time ago, in which a trigger was tied to this person's heartbeat. Should his heart stop, something catastrophic was to happen.

Movie "Spawn"?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Safe how? It sounds like he is being charged for possession of kiddy porn among other things.

Which is a little weird, given that he's a minor himself. Would selfies count?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Time_Ngler]

Oh Jesus! The wrench thing again... doesn't apply here.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless its themselves doing the subverting.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

not exactly. if you email someone kiddy porn, they don't automatically get in trouble because you sent it, likewise, if i said this zip file contains mp3s and it contains mp4s of kiddy porn, same thing. if you delete it right away or even go to the cops (with a lawyer or you're retarded), you'd most likely be in the clear. it's the same if someone mailed cocaine. if you don't know, you don't know.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps these consoles will be cracked quicker?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[hairyfeet]

What? Who in the fuck is soooo damned retarded they will download 1.7 fricking TB of data that is completely fucking useless because its encrypted? Hell how in the fuck do you know this isn't just his way of railing against the possession laws by seeing how many dumb fucks he can get to download child pron huh?

You have NO idea, ZERO, what the fuck is in this stuff, you only have the word of one single person who is already an admitted criminal who has broken into countless companies, caused who knows how many people to have to deal with the "fun"of having to replace their credit cards, and we are just supposed to take his word for it? There is stupid and then there is plain old ignorant, and if you download 1.7Tb without even knowing WTF it is you are firmly in the latter column.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing that prison rape rates are much, much, much, much, much lower than Hollywood would like you to believe,why would you offrer this to the conversation? Does spreading FUD make you feel like a man? Like a man raping another man, even?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, now I see one use for it:
1. He has his hard disks encrypted.
2. The court claims the 5th doesn't apply and wants to order him to give up the password.
3. Game companies ask the judge not to do that.

Just in case anyone thinks this strategy might seriously work: forget it. Not in the current McCarthyism climate.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[pipatron]

I would easily do it if I hadn't filled my hard drive with crap movies I'll never watch. I'd just put a wget in a screen on my server and go on with my life. In a few days it'll be on my HD, ready to be removed the instant I need the space for more crap movies I'll never watch. It's not really a big deal.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's much more akin to threatening to blow himself up while near something valuable. How valuable exactly, and if it's enough to make things not terrible for him, we don't know.

Re: Insurance Policy?

[madprof]

The 5th what? US constitutional amendment? Do they even have such an equivalent law in Australia?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[NemoinSpace]

Backups are free. Restores, not free. Call me!

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

not too weird. imagine (or rather, dont) pictures of an adult male having sex with a six year old or similar. doesnt matter if its a minor viewing the pictures, the kid in the photo is still a victim of abuse

Re:Insurance Policy?

[hairyfeet]

Then I'm sorry but you sir are ignorant, again you have NO CLUE what is in this shit, could be state secrets, could be a huge cache of kiddie porn, you have ZERO way of knowing WTF it is except by taking this guy's word at face value...do YOU know this guy? Because I sure as hell don't, not enough to know whether he is telling the truth, just being a dick because he can be, hell we've had an asshole on this very site use links to child porn like a fucking rickroll just because they were douchebags and thought that was funny.

If it turned out to be something nasty i doubt seriously any court is gonna believe you downloaded THAT much shit without even the tiniest clue as to what it is just for the hell of it, that would be a seriously hard sell to any jury, so WTF would make you want to take that risk for some douchebag you wouldn't know if you ran into on the street?

Again you have NO idea what you are getting into, NO clue as to what the contents are, you could be opening yourself up to years in PMITA prison and for what? What do you possibly gain by giving this asshole 1.7TB of storage for his shit on your PC?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[TsuruchiBrian]

encryption...

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Eyeball97]

It's 1.7 TB - TERABYTES - you fucking retard

Take your fucking poncy Tibibytes and shove them up your arse.

"Oh, but we have to have the bi to specify it's BINARY Terabytes you see!"

No, you don't, you foul smelling infected festering gonad. ONLY YOU insignificant fucking worms get confused as to whether kilo is 1,000 or 1,024 depending on context.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The year is 2013.

Who the fuck saves their porn locally, and why would you need... Oh. But then... why would you want the world to have your CP, backup or no?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

um...yeah, you didn't get it.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[tftp]

Unfortunately, "your wrong" © on all accounts. You may be not convicted if after several years of arrest and bond and trial you will prove that it's not your {CP,cocaine,whatever}. Even that is not obvious because your opposition is not empty-handed either.

There were many instances of innocent people, one even being mayor of the town where it happened, receiving an unexpected package - and when they touched it they were arrested by cops who were lying in wait. Sometimes drug dealers ship drugs not to their own address, but to someone nearby, who receives packages at the door. If you get caught with illegal items, like a bag of drugs in your car, under the carpet, you will be presumed to be the owner of the contraband. If you think that the bag was dropped by a hitchhiker who you gave a lift a year ago, good luck proving that - you will never prove that it wasn't you.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't want to store 1.7 Tb of meaningless shit I can;t view or use for my own gain. Would you?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Book: Snow Crash?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Nyder]

...

Also what good is the Dev SW for a PS4 or XBone without the hardware? We already know what the HW will be like, does anyone give a shit what SW the consoles will use? The people who could make use of it, developers; already have their Dev kits in hand.

Console hackers would love access to the Dev SW. While sure, it's not the hardware, it might show possible bugs they can use to gain access to the machine.

Plus when they do figure out how to run homebrew on it, a lot of times the first public (internal releases usually for the scene) "dev kits" are based, or hacked Dev SW.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[chrismcb]

by putting it out there he all but guaranteed his arrest

From TFA:

Last Kotaku heard SuperDaE was out on bail.

So it looks like he is already arrested.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to download it too. Just to see you blow your top some more.

Re: Insurance Policy?

[freman]

No

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

It reminds me of this movie/show I saw a long time ago, in which a trigger was tied to this person's heartbeat. Should his heart stop, something catastrophic was to happen. Sort of a guarantee that people would want him alive.

I don't know if that was also done in a movie/tv show, but it was definitely the exact setup that Raven had in Snow Crash. The cataclysmic event that'd occur in the event of his death was the detonation of a hydrogen bomb he always had with him. It got the cops to not only not give him trouble, but to even defend him against anyone seeking to do him harm.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

The cock! *Use* the cock!!

Re:Insurance Policy?

[pipatron]

Yeah, that's kind of my point. It pisses off a lot of people who I'd like to be pissed off. Would be even more awesome if it were a single 1.7TB file, but I guess that's unlikely.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

"How can I get to this guy? Oh, I know! I'll download a FILE! From the INTERNET! On my own Internet connection and to my own hard drive! That'll show him"

This is one rung on the dorkiness ladder higher than those people who are having moments of silence on Twitter (everyone will notice how I thoughtfully don't post anything on Twitter in the memory of ..., right?)

You'd better at least provide the proofs that you started the download, or else how would those people know they should be pissed off?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[bryan1945]

FTFA- He's Australian. I don't think the FBI has jurisdiction.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Digital Vomit]

You never, ever go to the cops if you come across CP. Ever. Most police forces have proven themselves completely untrustworthy when it comes to CP. If you come across CP, you destroy it and keep your mouth shut.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[hobarrera]

The FBI (or USA, for that matter), always has jurisdiction, no matter where. Didn't you get the memo?

Re:Insurance Policy?

[hobarrera]

I'm not sure how this works in Australia, but where I live, it's not ilegal for a seventeen year old to have sex with a sixteen year old. I'm pretty sure we're not the only country where this is legal.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[SuricouRaven]

But is it legal for a seventeen year old to possess a photo of a naked sixteen year old? Probably not.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[hobarrera]

Well, they can have sex, I don't think it's illegal [for them] to take photographs of it. Distributing them probably is.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Heretic2]

Just for reference, if you look at the summary you'll see that what he's released is that trove... encrypted. The idea is that if he gets arrested, he yells out the passphrase, but until then this might as well be 1.7TiB of /dev/random

If you read the article, you'll see that it gets auto-decrypted if he fails to check in. So if he gets arrested and can't access the failsafe to reset it the timer, it gets released.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[hairyfeet]

It just shows that if you could turn stupid people into electricity you'd solve the energy problem tomorrow.

I mean do i personally give a wet fuck if after it was pointed out you could be downloading anything, state secrets, child porn, terrorist crap that could get you several years in PMITA prison, that some retard goes "huh huh, I'll download it anyway, just to show I'm retarded huh huh"? Nope, not my IP address that will trace back to it, not my hard drive it will be found on, I won't be the one looking at time so i really don't give a fuck, zero fucks to give here.

Hell if you "really want to show me" why don't you go download some CP and visit some terrorist websites, boy I bet that would really show me who is boss huh...dumbass.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[pipatron]

So what if you go to a website and it's serving javascript with an embedded and encrypted child porn jpeg? You should stop browsing the internet because it could happen, and then you'll go to jail.

It must be difficult living in such perpetual fear.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Rakarra]

So what if you go to a website and it's serving javascript with an embedded and encrypted child porn jpeg?

Your lawyer will have to do one fantastic job to convince a jury of that.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Chelloveck]

So let's assume he's being truthful and he actually has "source code for older titles plus development kits for the PS4 and Xbox One consoles". Um... So what? How is that damaging to the companies involved? Source code for older titles? Who cares? Dev kits? They hand those things out like candy to development studios. Sure, under NDA, but it's not like their business plan is toast if the dev kit gets leaked.

It sounds like a small price to pay to pick off and make an example of some pissant little self-proclaimed l33t h4x0r. With blackmail that weak I'd nail him to the wall just because he sounds like a prick.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention there is a pretty big fucking difference between the cops finding a single JPG in a web browser cache and the fact that you have a 1.7 FRICKING TB PILE sitting right there on your hard drive, don't ya think?

Again it just shows that if you could turn stupidity like the guy above you into electricity? We'd solve the energy crisis tomorrow. I mean this is "getting into a van with a stranger that offers candy" levels of dumbshit, you don't know this guy from the man in the moon, in fact ALL we know about the guy is that he has done several website break ins, so obviously what the law thinks about what he is doing is not something he gives a rat's ass about, yet he is gonna blindly trust to download 1.7TB from this guy, sight unseen, and store it for this fucker just because he SAYS its something good, and he thinks it MIGHT piss off some guy he don't even know who doesn't give a shit about him and whom he never met?

There is stupid and then there is people that need to be kept from breeding because they are the piss in the gene pool, that dumbass is squarely in the latter.

Re:Insurance Policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

...but until then this might as well be 1.7TiB of /dev/random

Wouldn't anybody use /dev/urandom for that much data?!

Unintended Consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Now hackers everywhere have a reason to get SuperDaeE arrested.

Re:Unintended Consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

lol. yep! however, i'm pretty sure most hackers that are willing and able to do anything with the data will be receiving the decryption key 'under the table' so to speak.

Re:Unintended Consequences

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point. I imagine some of the hackers self-identifying as "Anonymous" will take to calling themselves SuperDaeE instead.

Re:Unintended Consequences

[Archangel Michael]

Or at least find a Hammer

FTP?

[Anonymous Coward]

> using centralized resource to distribute "insurance"
>> 2013

Re:FTP?

[Anonymous Coward]

>2013
>still using meme arrows.

OMG

[lesincompetent]

Valve too?
Please SuperDaeE tell me: can they count to three?

F**K DRM!

[Anonymous Coward]

#hacktheplanet

Do it like Snowden

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

This guy should defect to China.

Re:Do it like Snowden

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowden has not defected.

Re:Do it like Snowden

[PRMan]

"China: Bastion of civil rights." Has kind of a funny ring to it...

Re:Do it like Snowden

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, right.

Re:Do it like Snowden

[HarrySmoot]

China: where they spy on you also, but at least they don't try to hide it

Re:Do it like Snowden

[houghi]

": Bastion of civil rights." Has kind of a funny ring to it...

FTFY

Too large to be useful...

[Darkness404]

This sounds like too large of an "insurance" to be useful. Most people don't have the bandwidth or the space to hold 1.7 TB of encrypted info. Smaller files might make sense but not huge ones like this.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[asmkm22]

Just uploading that must have been a real bitch.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[VorpalRodent]

And even if they did...what's the value? Please explain to me if I'm missing something, but if I can't decrypt it, then my having a copy is just to protect his "insurance policy", in which case I'm aiding and abetting. I assume additional risk with zero potential benefit, except perhaps helping "stick it to the corporate blah blah blah"?

Re:Too large to be useful...

[dittbub]

Perhaps he will take a wikileaks like approach. Release individual games slowly over time but have the larger file available should he be interupted

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

And even if they did...what's the value?

The companies involved are going to be archiving a copy of this. Even if their own corporate lawyers are screaming at them to delete it, plenty of devs are going to do it anyway. In case the key ever does get leaked, the curiosity to look at competitors' source can be overwhelming to some.

An extra 1.7TB of crap that nobody will probably ever look at again? That's what the art department churns out on a Thursday afternoon. It's not that big.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[loufoque]

It takes about two days at 100Mb/s

Re:Too large to be useful...

[rodrigoandrade]

I bet he's too young to have ever used alt.binaries to know how it's done.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[HybridST]

If I were to start the download on my home connection which tops out at about 100kb/s(fastest in my area) it won't be finished before I receive the 4 year degree I start in the fall. Then there's the keyfile to think about. I think I'll skip this one.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[loufoque]

You probably mean 100kB/s, not 100kb/s.
It will still take you about 200 days.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Grave]

Or he actually did mean 100kb/s, which puts it at 4.3 years, fitting the timeline he stated.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worthless at the moment, but keeping it stored somewhere is an investment in case the passphrase ever gets released.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[SuricouRaven]

Only one person needs to keep a copy, though.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[loufoque]

Any old copper telephone line supports at least 512kbit/s.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Sir_Sri]

Game developers in countries not so encumbered by copyright law will happily look at it the moment they can free from repercussions too.

If you're in china, and make games for the chinese market why do you care what some 'murican game developer has to say? Like every other knock off and counterfeiter in china, they don't care in the slightest.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

False. 56k modems were the top tier for dialup, nearly 1/10 the speed you claim.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/56_kbit/s_modem

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

For fuck's sake, man! Don't talk about that. Shhhh!

Re:Too large to be useful...

[jandrese]

Don't you mean 56kbit/s? And really, 52kbit/s?

Pulling a 1.7TB file over a modem would be quite the achievement though. I imagine you getting to 1.6TB and then mom picks up the phone and makes the carrier drop and you have to start all over again.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[HybridST]

Correct- It is indeed only 100kb/s peak download where I live.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[loufoque]

56 kbit/s is what you get with dial-up. 512 kbit/s is the minimum of what you get with DSL.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[psithurism]

You're betting on him being captured and giving the pass-phrase out when the companies he hacked don't show up to rescue him, or some other hacker breaking the encryption key so you can look at it while he goes to jail anyway.

The idea is that once he gets arrested, the other people who downloaded it may hoard the information they get out of it and his site will get shut down when you're 1/2lf way through downloading it. Then you'll have to sit around for a few years waiting for those guys to release portions of what they decrypted.

In the mean time, you're just humoring a 17year old prankster that fancies himself a l33t hax0r, haha, wouldn't it be funny if he really DID have all the data he says he has? Downloading a bunch of random data isn't abetting.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

512 kbit/s is the minimum of what you get with DSL.

Maybe for those with newer lines, a bit of luck or living in your fantasy world... there are plenty of places that the lines will not support that speed.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[asmkm22]

I envy the rest of the world then. The best upload speed we get here is about 2Mb/s meaning about 3 months to complete.

Is it very common for people to have ISP's offer high upload speeds like that?

Re:Too large to be useful...

[loufoque]

Actually, even FTTH ISPs usually only provide 50Mb/s up (100Mb/s down).
FTTH is of course not very common outside of important cities.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

You used to be able to get 64k DSL - I don't know of anyone offering that anymore, but it was initially used as a ISDN replacement.

You can still get 256k/128k DSL around here in some of the remote areas.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Khyber]

"512 kbit/s is the minimum of what you get with DSL."

Wroooooong.

Call me back when you live more than a few thousand feet from the phone company office.

Still got friends buying '3 mbit' packages and only getting 256 kbit download.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[TsuruchiBrian]

a 2TB drive can be had for less than $100 nowadays.

I am sure a lot of people are willing to temporarily use $100 of equipment to hold this kind of info, especially those who are interested in this sort of thing.

As long as one anonymous person has downloaded it, he can reupload the data if it turns out there is anything desirable in it.

I actually have about 8TB free on my server. I might actually download it if I didn't care about being on some FBI list. If you have the free space, then using it for this trove until you need the space for something else is not a big deal.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[tftp]

It doesn't matter how much the phone line can theoretically support if there is no DSLAM within a few miles from your home, and a fiber from the said DSLAM to a better connected facility.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[tftp]

Downloading a bunch of random data isn't abetting.

Recent decisions of courts with regard to terrorism do not lend credence to this theory. If you take a gun, load it, point at a man and fire - but the gun fails to fire because of bad primer in that one round - you are still guilty.

Considering the situation, there is no lawful reason for you to download that file. It can be always shown that you hoped for a chance to gain access to illegally obtained software (if you get the key) or to threaten others with release of that software (if you don't yet have the key.) The latter becomes aiding, abetting, and probably conspiracy as well. If the judge asks you why you downloaded the file, what will you say?

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 30 and what is this?

Re:Too large to be useful...

[loufoque]

You're probably confusing bit and byte again.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Anonymous Coward]

if you use dialup, why the HELL don't you use a download manager with restore connectivity function. I was 12 with a dialup modem and knew to do this. (free nights and weekends calls on landlines=spool up the download manager and let it run since nobody is going to be calling at 2 in the morning on a weekend)

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Khyber]

Uh you do know that networking speeds are still measured in bits, yea?

Oh, seven digit UID. Never mind.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[loufoque]

You're barely six-digit yourself. I don't even see how what you're saying is relevant to the post you're replying to.

Re:Too large to be useful...

[Khyber]

Well known fact about slashdot proven in a study (which enables me to disable all advertising on the site) poster intelligence drops rapidly once you hit seven digit uids.

And that's apparently true up into the mid million and then some given your failure of a post above. You seriously seem to know nothing about the limitations of DSL. Like I said - take your ignorant self a few thousand feet from the CO and see if you get your advertised speed. Protip: you won't - not even close.

I am a 1337 hax0r

[Spy Handler]

I have 2.0 GB of source code for Windows 8, Windows 9 alpha, Call of Duty Ghosts, World of Warcraft Annihilation and Donkey Kong Junior. I have encrypted the file and am withholding the key in case I get arrested. But trust me, it's all there.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 2.0 GB of source code for Windows 8, Windows 9 alpha, Call of Duty Ghosts, World of Warcraft Annihilation and Donkey Kong Junior. I have encrypted the file and am withholding the key in case I get arrested.

But do you have the good copy of Duke Nukem that was suppressed by Bill Gates? (to delay the alien invasion, of course)

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[liamevo]

When you start releasing info on yet to be confirmed or released hardware, services and sdk's, which are then verified, then you can take the piss.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[interkin3tic]

It does say he "leaked loads of accurate new info to Kotaku about the then unnamed Xbox One and PS4 earlier this year," which is possibly why the generally-not-born-yesterday kotaku may be taking it somewhat seriously.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[jellomizer]

You needed Donkey Kong Junior just to make you hit 2.0 Gigabytes exactly. Right?

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard this a few times before: "take the piss"
What does it mean exactly?

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[Anonymous Coward]

Except there are thousands of developers out there who already have these SDKs and hardware and already know all of this info.

There is no reason to think he's a hacker any more than just some douche who violated an NDA and then pretended to be a hacker.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[Anonymous Coward]

He forgot to mention that to hit the exact 2.0gb mark, he had to add pacman to the list.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[X0563511]

Did you bother even searching for it?

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[Anubis IV]

which is possibly why the generally-not-born-yesterday kotaku may be taking it somewhat seriously.

My faith in Kotaku has diminished quite a bit following the attack piece they published against Silicon Knights and Dennis Dyack. Dyack (who is certainly no saint, but is also not the embezzler he's made out to be) later did a point-by-point rebuttal to it, providing convincing information and evidence to contradict each of its claims, and even managed to get a hold of a copy of an e-mail from a Wired editor to the freelance author of the Kotaku attack piece, in which the editor turned down the article due to its unsubstantiated claims that had no basis in fact. It turns out that the article was shopped around to a number of other magazines, all of which turned it down, before it finally got sold to Kotaku, who apparently saw no issues with publishing an attack piece that didn't have a scrap of evidence and was based solely on claims made by disgruntled anonymous sources that couldn't even have had access to the information they claimed to have.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[Anonymous Coward]

He accurately leaked the specs of the XBox One and PS4 before their announcements earlier this year to Kotaku apparently according to the article cited in the /. post.

I think that somewhat makes his claims reliable.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[interkin3tic]

I'm not saying they're great journalists. I'm not even saying they're great for a video game news website, just that they are a little more skeptical than supermarket tabloids usually.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, someone really needs to take this up with anyone who takes them seriously. these people are scum.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[Anubis IV]

I can agree with that. On the whole, they're "not bad", but they are certainly not as careful as they should be.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[Anonymous Coward]

I am from Britain and I have to say that it was not until I came to America that I saw a hot water bottle that came with an attachment for inserting into the rectum. Motes, logs, eyes...

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[Anonymous Coward]

But, by the same token, Kotaku also ran a piece discounting his credibility just a couple months ago, so the fact that they are reporting that he claims to have that doesn't surprise me too much.

http://kotaku.com/5986239/the-rise-and-fall-of-superdae-a-most-unusual-video-game-hacker

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[steelfood]

It's collectively worth $200 million. If you wire me $20,000 right now, I can get it out of the country and you can take 20% of the profits from the sale.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[BluBrick]

British people have sexual fetishes involving urine (so called "golden showers") at the highest rate per capita in the world. Most Brits have engaged in it at least once in their lives. Something with such a strong cultural association is bound to creep into slang eventually, that's all.

Do you really want to play that card without citation?

Consider the number of uses of "ass" and "butt" that have not just crept in, but become firmly lodged in US slang. I'll get you started...

• Shove it up your ass
• Blow it our your ass
• Kiss my ass
• I'll kick / whoop your ass
• His ass is grass / toast / history
• His ass is mine
• That chaps my ass / burns my butt
• I'll have his ass in a sling
• Big-ass (house, car, whatever)
• Asshole
• Asswipe
• Asshat
• Ass-clown
• Butthurt / buttsore

... to name but a few (pun intended).

Now consider the strength of the cultural association that let to such popularity of usage. Finally, consider again whether you really want to tug at that thread.

Re:I am a 1337 hax0r

[oztiks]

I have 2.0 GB of source code for Windows 8, Windows 9 alpha

Please, if you're going to steal something you should check to make sure it's of real value to someone first. Donkey Kong Junior is perhaps the biggest ticket item you've mentioned!

Book of Random Numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

RAND Corporation's published random numbers contains the Necronomicon. It's encrypted though.

Fucking idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

These retards give the word 'hacker' a bad name. Goddam imbecile, I hope he rots in jail.
--
I never user products from companies who feed customer data to the NSA. Are you listening, Google?

Re:Fucking idiot

[interkin3tic]

THAT'S what you're upset about?

Okay, call him an "Information Liberator." He doesn't appear to have referred to himself as a hacker, at least not in the short article, so lets assume he never did. Do you still hope he dies imprisoned?

If not, why are you getting so bent out of shape about a trivial use of a trivial word?

Re:Fucking idiot

[ae1294]

I never user products from companies who feed customer data to the NSA. Are you listening, Google?

So how are you posting this again? Every Internet company is feeding data to the NSA sooooo?

Re:Fucking idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

How can they listen if you don't... oh nevermind, I'm sure I already put more thought in this than you did into your comment.

Re:Fucking idiot

[hairyfish]

So how are you posting this again? Every Internet company is feeding data to the NSA sooooo?

Even in China? The NSA is bigger than we thought!

Re:Fucking idiot

[Jesrad]

So how are you posting this again?

I guess through a VPN hosted in, say, Sweden.

Maybe you should, too.

Re:Fucking idiot

[MurukeshM]

The NSA is bigger than we thought!

That it certainly is.

Re:Fucking idiot

[dubbelj]

Sweden is also evesdropping it's citizens since 2008...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law

Re:Fucking idiot

[Jesrad]

I don't want to live on this planet anymore. You people have turned it into a collection of zoos for humans.

1.7tb of stuff..

[gl4ss]

..that nobody knows what it is?
that's a lot of hd to keep as insurance for some random dude.

and ftp? wtf? ever heard of bittorrent. or tor.

Re: 1.7tb of stuff..

[pellik]

Yeah, but when he gets arrested and the key is released it will be pretty awesome to have the file already.

Re:1.7tb of stuff..

[nitehawk214]

Why would a torrent swarm of people download a giant file that they cannot decrypt?

You know what, don't answer that. I am sure enough file hoarders will grab the file to keep the torrent alive alive.

Re:1.7tb of stuff..

[Anonymous Coward]

keep the torrent alive alive.

We wouldn't want it to be dead dead.

Re:1.7tb of stuff..

[Runaway1956]

No, but we could hang it by it's neck until dead, dead, dead!

Oh, wait - does data have a neck?

Re:1.7tb of stuff..

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, wait - does data have a neck?

Brent Spiner does.

Re:1.7tb of stuff..

[Anonymous Coward]

The swarm could first download the file as a swarm, then develop new software to work on decrypting it. If the swam was sufficiently large, it could be completed in our lifetime.

Re:1.7tb of stuff..

[hobarrera]

The only people I see downloading this are sysadmins with access to servers/pcs/clusters with extra free space.
No home user is going to give up a full 2TB disc just for some usless data that MAY be useful some day.

Insurance?

[Darth Snowshoe]

Insurance from whom, against whom? Like, Valve is going to call in its favor and get the FBI to get off his case, for fear of their DRM being compromised? I can totes see that happening.

Re:Insurance?

[gl4ss]

Insurance from whom, against whom? Like, Valve is going to call in its favor and get the FBI to get off his case, for fear of their DRM being compromised? I can totes see that happening.

pretty much all games on steam have had their checks cracked. not much to defeat there.

Re:Insurance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Insurance from not getting enough publicity. Adding that little bit on there makes it like a Hollywood movie and he's the star! Except life isn't like a movie, but enough people think it could be so he'll still get his 15 minutes.

Re:Insurance?

[interkin3tic]

I assume you are referencing the HL2 leak. Where valve got the guy to come to the states for a job interview at which point the FBI arrested him. And the same trick was used by valve years before.

So this guy should be skeptical of any job offers he gets from valve, rather than hold an insurance file.

Re:Insurance?

[dittbub]

I assume the guy is planning to release the source code chunk by chunk but hes at risk of being interrupted and arrested. His insurance policy makes sense because hes saying "you can arrest me but if you do then hundreds more will have access to the source and then you'll have to find them all too"

Re:Insurance?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you are referencing the HL2 leak. Where valve got the guy to come to the states for a job interview at which point the FBI arrested him. And the same trick was used by valve years before.

Did you even read the article you linked in your own post? It says that Valve failed to get the guy to come to the states for a job interview, and that the FBI did not arrest him; he was ultimately charged in Germany.

Re:Insurance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh.. the article you linked states:

After the secret source code for its then-unreleased shooter Half Life 2 showed up on file sharing services in 2003, game-maker Valve Software cooked up an elaborate ruse with the FBI targeting the German hacker suspected in the leak, even setting up a fake job interview in an effort to lure him to the United States for arrest.

The gambit ultimately failed, and Axel "Ago" Gembe remained safely in Germany.

and

Perhaps sensing that his relocation expenses would be shouldered by U.S. taxpayers, Gembe didn’t take the bait. He was ultimately charged in Germany, where he was sentenced to probation.

Note to self: Never travel to the United States.

Re:Insurance?

[interkin3tic]

Oops! I didn't. Sorry.

Re:Insurance?

[SuricouRaven]

It doesn't seem realistic. But he is seventeen - he may well expect it to work, being still naive about the level of assholery humans are capable of.

Encrypted blob

[SirGarlon]

I totally believe it's possible to exfiltrate data from multiple game companies (or indeed any companies). But how do we know he didn't just upload a 1.7 TB encrypted blob of random garbage? The word of a 17-year-old script kiddie is not exactly a lot to go on.

Re:Encrypted blob

[CastrTroy]

And it seems odd that there would be so much data. Source code doesn't take that much space, and neither do development kits. Perhaps he's including game assets like textures and cut scenes from the games, but I don't really see much point in including that, since it would mostly be easy to extract from the actual game files themselves.

Re:Encrypted blob

[Tharkkun]

I totally believe it's possible to exfiltrate data from multiple game companies (or indeed any companies). But how do we know he didn't just upload a 1.7 TB encrypted blob of random garbage? The word of a 17-year-old script kiddie is not exactly a lot to go on.

We need to crowdsource decrypt it and laugh at him.

Re:Encrypted blob

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, but still more trustworthy than the word of *any* corporate/government/alexjones person.

Re:Encrypted blob

[loufoque]

The xbox 360 base SDK is 2GB. If you count all extra stuff for Kinect etc. it's even bigger.
And they probably have tons of other middleware software, some of which could come with their own editing and authoring tools. That alone could account for a hundred gigs if not more.
Then there is source code. It's not unusal for a piece of software to have sources that account for 500MB, and several gigabytes if you include binaries.

All in all they probably also have binary assets of some sort, but software does take quite some space on a disk.

Re:Encrypted blob

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably 1.7TB of porn

Re:Encrypted blob

[cyberfunkr]

Remember, this is encrypted, not compressed.

I run a small-sized website. Not including graphics, I have almost 40MB of data.
Heavily commented source
Archives of old, or out-dated source
Upgrade scripts
Notes
API information
DOC files
UI examples
etc...

It doesn't take that long to build up data now a days.

Re:Encrypted blob

[sl4shd0rk]

And it seems odd that there would be so much data. Source code doesn't take that much space

Um, it's really not that uncommon for source code to occupy much more space than it's compiled form. Perhaps you need to stop writing so much stuff in debug..

Re:Encrypted blob

[Anonymous Coward]

It is when the 17 year old script kiddie produced now-verified leaks of the new Xbox One and PS4 before their respective companies announced them. That's worth at lease a bit more street cred than you seem to be giving him.

Re:Encrypted blob

[Anonymous Coward]

A full linux distribution comes in at less than 10 GB of compressed source, or 100 GB of uncompressed source (probably less, assuming good development practices).

The largest single game comes in at ~70 GB compressed.
http://kat.ph/games/6/?field=size&sorder=desc

1.7 TB (compressed) would be around 25 of the largest games that have ever existed, the entire libraries several major gaming platforms, or the source of one game and half its cinematic assets.

Re:Encrypted blob

[psithurism]

I suspect he hasn't sorted through it. e probably grabbed everything he could find on a dozen different servers / company and never bothered to cut out identical files along with all the garbage that accumulates in projects under development; e.g. versioned backups of the 80 variations of each texture the team went through to vote out later.

I suspect it still won't be useful to your average person once decrypted, until someone with way too much time on their hands goes through it, if they do at all.

Re:Encrypted blob

[Anonymous Coward]

Who say's it's not compressed?

Compression and encryption are not mutually exclusive. (Except the NTFS types!)

Re:Encrypted blob

[Subject-17]

Not to mention if he has asserts like project files for models. You know, like Maya and Blender project files (not just the renders). That'd be pretty awesome

Re:Encrypted blob

[Ksevio]

One would hope that he had compressed it before encrypting it. It does seem fairly high though. He could store 42,500 copies of your small sized website and that's assuming he didn't compress it.

Re:Encrypted blob

[tepples]

it's really not that uncommon for source code to occupy much more space than it's compiled form

Then why are .pyc (compiled Python bytecode) files roughly the same size as .py (Python source code) files?

Better download this through TOR

[Anonymous Coward]

nt

lol wat

[Anonymous Coward]

Insurance in what sense?

1. Get arrested;
2. Release password to unencrypt source code for old software;
3. Get charged with yet another crime;
4. ???

Re:lol wat

[bjb_admin]

4. Don't drop the soap

I smell...

[DiEx-15]

...a trap.

1) You don't "announce" to the world that you did something like this and not expect the Internet Police (ie: The FBI) to not do anything. All this dumbass did was paint a bullseye on his ass for both the LE and his future cell mate Bubba to aim their wangs at.
2) Even if all 1.7TB is encrypted, either the Gov will decrypt it or force him to decrypt it unless he enjoys the love Bubba give him.
3) There is a high probability the FBI, Steam, and a few won't give a rat's ass. If TFA is true, there is a probability that the "older source code" was already released to the public and is readily available via a quick Google search.
4) If this numbnuts is telling the truth, why should anybody trust him? The file could easily have nasty things in it to aid this person or blab to the listening FBI/NSA that you have naughty things on your drive?

So why waste ungodly amounts of hours downloading a 1.7 TB file when, from what it sounds like, you can find without doing that? Frankly, I have no need for any of it and got better things to download. Like porn.

Re:I smell...

[Loadmaster]

1. He's Australian not American
2. He's announced he hacked these people previously
3. He's already been raided
4. He wants more attention

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/24/4024062/the-secrets-of-hacker-and-xbox-durango-leaker-superdae

Re:I smell...

[loufoque]

You can't just decrypt stuff just because you want to. It's protected by the power of math.

Re:I smell...

[Laxori666]

oblig Secrets from the Future link. The refrain:

You can’t hide secrets from the future with math.
You can try, but I bet that in the future they laugh
at the half-assed schemes and algorithms amassed
to enforce cryptographs in the past.

Re:I smell...

[loufoque]

Maybe in a divergent future where they prove that P = NP and where rap music is actually relevant.

Re:I smell...

[SuricouRaven]

2. Doesn't matter. So what? All they'd do is confirm he is not bluffing.
3. Is the flaw in the plan. It's based on the idea that the games companies he hacked are headed by executives who would ask the FBI to let him go free to protect their own trade secrets, and that the FBI is obliged to obey if such a request is made. Neither of these is true. Chances are at least one of those companies would rather crucify him to set an example, and even if they all back down the FBI can go ahead and prosecute anyway - and now this is all public they have little choice, as no prosecutor who values their career can be seen to back down to threats made by a criminal - especially now they have done their trawling and managed to find some drugs and something legally classed as child porn (I suspect he has pictures of a 17-year-old girlfriend).

Re:I smell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe in a divergent future where they prove that P = NP and where rap music is actually relevant.

Funny, because that's the rationale behind the Utah Data Center. At least some of what's unbreakable today will become breakable at some time in the future, even if it's for mundane reasons like bugs in the crypto code. So why not hoover it all up and sit on it until someone gets a clever idea...

Re:I smell...

[DiEx-15]

Wow. I tried to post serious contentions that I seen about this issue and I get knocked down for trolling, when in fact I wasn't trying to troll. Trolling isn't something I do here.

Let me see if I can clarify it in a way that won't come off as trollish:

First: I have never heard of this guy till Loadmaster directed me to an article about him. Until I did, I had the same reaction I had when I heard of Lulsec and various other high profile incidents (I will attempt to refrain from using the word "hacker" because that phrase isn't a correct description of this event), which was: Some lax in security invited some person to infiltrate and gather data. Then said individual wanted to seek attention and is/was acting all surprised when the law came after him. Basically: blabbing about it only draws the wrong kind of attention and in certain cases makes one look like an attention seeker. I'm not sure if that is what he is or not but what he is doing isn't a wise idea either way.

Secondly: Don't be so sure that Encryption == Keeps things secure. Without knowing how this individual encrypted the data, I can only speculate. However, and this greatly depends on how tech savvy the LE is, if the person assigned to decode it recognizes the algorithm as some kind of readily available tool, they might be able use that to decrypt it.

Then again, I could be wrong and over grossly overestimating the tech savvy of the world's law enforcement tech skills. However that can be made up for by pestering/harassing/legal bombarding/forcing the individual to do that hard work for said law enforcement. That I am positive of regardless of your country origin.

Thirdly: From the article it said he had source code from old games. I know game companies have from time to time released source code of their games. So I wonder what source code he has and if it is already publicly released SC, why the big deal? If it is publicly available, why encrypt it with the other stuff? It's not precisely "hidden info" and the game company isn't going to do anything. They said it was OK after all. If the FBI or LE wanted to jump him for it, it'd backfire in their face due to the fact it was already a publicly released work.

Now if it is for something like a new game or from a game that the makers didn't make public, THAT would make more sense.

Finally, whenever I hear stories of somebody who's done some dubious feat and is sharing the bounty of said feat, I fall back on the old children's lesson: "Never take candy from strangers". To me this is a 1.7 TB Encrypted piece of candy that I have skepticism about. If that gets me labeled as a troll, I have no issues as I'd rather be cautious than end up finding out the 1.7 TB Candy was laced with Digital GHB. Then again, I am not so skeptical that I am not willing to admit I'm wrong or not be further informed. In fact, that is what I'd like: To be convinced that my skepticism is wrong.

Re:I smell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Secondly: Don't be so sure that Encryption == Keeps things secure. Without knowing how this individual encrypted the data, I can only speculate. However, and this greatly depends on how tech savvy the LE is, if the person assigned to decode it recognizes the algorithm as some kind of readily available tool, they might be able use that to decrypt it.

He hacked into numerous companies and stole tens of gigabytes of information. Do you *really* think he doesn't know how to properly use encryption? Even 7-zip supports AES-256 encryption. Sure, anyone can recognize that.... good luck finding a tool to break into it without the key. Seriously, do some fucking reading.

Re:I smell...

[tftp]

10 MB of sources for a new and small game would be pretty bad because many coders can figure out how to compile the thing, and then perhaps improve or develop on it.

1 TB of sources is useless to anyone. You need a building full of coders who coded this very thing from the day zero to even put it all together, with all the libraries, linker files, batch files, tests, models, setup projects, and so on. Hardly anyone on this Earth has time to sift through a terabyte of sources. If I need a game, I will not spend a year of my life to hack it from a snapshot that was taken who knows when and without a guarantee that it is complete. In some software houses the head of the tree may compile, but it doesn't mean that the end product is a usable build. Only tagged revisions are of some value. This means that if I need a game I will spend $50 and buy one, with the latest code and with all the updates that are available to this date.

Re:I smell...

[SwampChicken]

Most of it could be game assets and not source code.

Re:I smell...

[tftp]

Perhaps. But it's even more useless then. Who needs textures and models that are encoded with a proprietary editor for a very specific use, with zero documentation, and can be rendered only by a very specific engine? (Like the swaying grass in Far Cry 2, for one example.) Music could be the only readily usable asset - if somehow it pains one too much to plug the S/PDIF in and record it in all its digital glory. Sometimes studios publish the music separately, in better format. Such music is "out there" for many games, and it was not recorded during the game.

Re:I smell...

[SuricouRaven]

He also mentioned he's managed to get SDKs and secret licensed-developers-only tools, so there's probably something like a customised version of visual studio in there - and perhaps game asset sources, the PSD files complete with layers for all the textures. Things like that could bring it up to 1.7TB.

Sources for a recent version could be used to easily subvert copy-protection, especially if he got code for a non-released server of a multiplayer game. Or used for cheating - if you can get it to compile, not hard to set wall.opacity=0.5 and commence pwning everyone. He's not just an inept boaster - he's confirmed as having broken into companies before, so it's plausible that he may not be bluffing.

I can't see the bluff working though. Not at this stage. It might have been enough to convince a game company or two to back down, but now the FBI is involved - if you try to blackmail the FBI, it just makes them all the more determined to pile on the charges.

Re:I smell...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard

You may want to read up on that. Encryption is not 'unbreakable'. It is just takes a long time. As computer get better encryption algs come and go. There was a time when many forms of DES were the gold standard. You do not use the older versions anymore as it is easily crackable on a standard laptop computer in a fairly sane amount of time. It used to take acres or custom one off hardware. Some people even offload it to things like amazon for a small cost.

The insurance file idea WILL work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like Wikileaks two insurance files. Anyone remember those? They still haven't been cracked. Anyone still care? Well, whatever, I'm sure this will work.

Re:The insurance file idea WILL work.

[SuricouRaven]

I'm sure a few people are holding on to them. Just in case. Assange is a true fanatical idealist - if he at any point believes he is going down, he won't hestitate to release the key and take a few percieved enemies with him. The only reason the key hasn't been released yet is his ability by luck and skill to evade all attempts to get him somewhere the US or allies could charge him.

He's still in the Ecuadorian embassy - he's shown no signs of wanting to move, Ecuador has shown no inclination to kick him out, and the UK isn't going to start a major diplomatic incident by trying to take him by force. His situation appears stable, so long as he doesn't pull of any stunt great enough to upset his current host.

Hang on a sec

[DrXym]

Since this is encrypted this could be 1.7TB of shit for anyone knows. Or is there a sampler or something people are supposed to download to know it isn't?

So not only a hacker...

[Anonymous Coward]

But a peodophile according to the article...he has drugs, weapons and child porn charges already

Re:So not only a hacker...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a minor himself. The "child pornography" could be pictures of his own dick for all we know, or a 17 year old girlfriend. The "drug" charges are "posession of cannabis and cannabis paraphernalia" so who gives a shit and the "weapons" charge was supposedly a stun gun. Not a taser, just one of those sparky things.

Re:So not only a hacker...

[SuricouRaven]

Which stinks of an FBI trawl - that's the type of charge list you'd expect when the FBI wants to take someone down but can't actually convict them, so goes hunting for anything else illegal they may have done instead.

Everyone is a criminal in some way. Just got to dig deep enough to find how.

He's obviously not Canadian

[Kinwolf]

At least we know this hacker isn't Canadian. With our current ISP plans, it would have taken 1.5 years to upload 1.7TB of data without busting the bank in extra fees for bandwith.

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you never heard of the possibiliy of direct server-to-server transfer, did you?
SSH in, and SCP or RSYNC that shit over. Where's the problem? Even pulling it from the other server with HTTP, FTP, etc is not a problem. If it comes to it, even piping a TAR output/input over a random socket using bash does the job.

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[Anonymous Coward]

"Jokes, what do people see in them?" - Darrill (That's Da-rill)

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[Anonymous Coward]

It is actually cheaper and faster to fly to Hong Kong from Canada with a HDD and get it upload there.

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[tom17]

It would actually take a little over 2 months at 10MBps if you restricted it to the unmetered times (6 hours a day) (That's a TekSavvy example).

But this would not apply if you were with one of the Big Two. Maybe that's what you meant? They barely count as internet service if you ask me. Rip-off merchants!

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[tom17]

I made a mistake. Uploads don't go towards your 300GB cap. So it would, in fact, only take ~16 days.

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[tom17]

Faster, yes. Cheaper? No.

Given that the longest a direct flight could be is currently about 18.5 hours, (Lets call it 20 due to time taken on either end), your transfer of 1.7TB would result in a throughput of about 200Mbps.

Not much of the world has a throughput that high, so the 'faster' part of your comment pretty much applies to the entire world :)

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, I'm getting ~30 Mbps uncapped right now. I could do it in less than a week. Teksavvy - give it a try if they're operating in your area.

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[Anonymous Coward]

Citation Needed.

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[Hsien-Ko]

I thought Australian bandwidth caps were far worse, like 1GB a month...

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[DarthVain]

They do if you are with Rogers or Bell. In the EULA they talk about "combined" caps, which of course includes uploads.

Rogers in terms of speed is pretty good if you get one of the Ultimate packages. Recently they randomly increased my cap, which was cool. Until I got a letter saying they were raising all the fees (which were already expensive), so it was really just justification for a money grab.

I pay about 80$ a month for just Internet. That gets me supposedly 30 MB/s and 275GB cap.

Also your 10MB/s and my 30MB/s are download speeds. Typical upload is MUCH slower. Mine is pretty fast a 2MB/s.

So if I got MAX 2MB/s upload (which I wouldn't no more than I actually get 30MB/s download), but if I did, it would take 10 days to do it.
1700000MB / 2MS/s = 850,000 /60min = 14166 /60h = 236 /24d = 9.8 days.

What would actually happen, is I would get charged an extra fee over cap up to the maximum (it was 50$ but it is probably 75$ now), so 155$... However, I am certain that they would totally shut off my service well before I ever got 1.7TB, making the whole procedure moot. Since it was a BT, I could probably pick up from where I left off the following month once the cap resets. However how far I would get past the 275GB cap before they axed me for the month, is likely one of those arbitrary statements in the EULA that says something to the effect "RSVP the right to terminate service for exceeding the cap by a large amount, whereby Rogers RVSP the right to define/change what a large amount actually means"...

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[tom17]

I actually said in my original post:
"But this would not apply if you were with one of the Big Two. Maybe that's what you meant? They barely count as internet service if you ask me. Rip-off merchants!"

By that I meant Rogers and Bell. Sorry to burst your bubble :(

And I was talking upload speeds, not download speeds; With Teksavvy, 15Mbit down /10Mbit up costs less than $50. Less than $60 if you want unlimited downloads.

For your $80-at-Rogers, you can get 25/10 with unlimited download or 50/10 with 300GB cap at Teksavvy.

What would actually happen with Rogers is, as you say, $155 or a disconnect, but at Teksavvy it would be ~16.5 days(if you used off-peak, or and no overage charges/cut-offs, like I said :)

BTW, your math is wrong*. If you only had 2Mbit/s upload, it would take you ~80 days. Unless you really meant you get 2MB/s upload, in which case you mean you get 30MB/s download which would put you at the 250Mbit/s product which costs $225/month. If you got that for $80, sign.me.up lol.

*I realise now that I had a typo in my original post and put 10MBps. I meant 10Mbit/s

Go on, do it :)
(I am not affiliated with them, just a very happy customer)

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[tom17]

Oh and I also got a letter from Teksavvy about fees too...

That's right, they REDUCED them ;)

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[tom17]

Which product do you have? I don't see one with 30Mbit/s upload...

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[DarthVain]

I may. I have looked several times, and teksavvy wasn't available in my market. However I looked again recently and I think it might be available now. As I am sure as one of those Mars projects engineers might say, my math is fine, my units however.... :)

Anyway I think the only reason I haven't switch yet is that Rogers hasn't really ticked me off lately (which they usually do eventually) and inertia/momentum/lazy has kept me from changing. However I could see myself switching in the near future.

Another thing thing that techsavvy has that Rogers doesn't is Static IP, or at least they used to. You used to be able to tack on a couple of Static IP addresses to your account for a couple extra bucks a month. Where both rogers and bell (of course because of all the competition you know) you are required to get a much more expensive business account rather than a residential. Which is quite handy if you don't actually have a business, but want to just mess about hosting all your own web servers etc... without having the extra complication of FreeDNS or all the rest of the Dynamic IP changing services out there.

Re:He's obviously not Canadian

[tom17]

Yep, the static IP is nice, though it has to be said that I am getting on just fine with non-static and the dynamic dns services work just fine for me. The ~1-5min outage when it auto-updates is only a mild annoyance, but not a huge issue to me as I only use my home server for personal stuff and testing. I have a few servers 'out there' for production stuff.

And I hear you on the momentum thing. It's one reason I still have cable. I think their retentions dept is too good lol. But the moment I can find a legit way to watch F1 live, bye bye Rogers!

If you do decide to try out Teksavvy and laziness/momentum is an issue for you (it's an issue for me too, I have not upgraded to my cheaper-but-faster or more-expensive-but-much-faster-VDSL service yet and I am still on legacy 6/0.8 :( ) then do be wary of the switch-over process. Though I painted them in a very good light above, they are ultimately at the whim of Rogers/Bell. One reason I have not yet gone to the 15/10 service is that Bell have been known to turn around and say, after the work order has been done, "sorry, you can only get 3Mbit/s up, so we'll put you on 15/1 which is not VDSL". I'm scared of that happening to me and there is nothing Teksavvy (or any other reseller) can do about it. Reality is, if my line only qualifies at 15/3, I'd rather get that and pay for 15/10 ($35) than get 15/1 ($33). But it's Bell/Rogers, what can you do?

There is also a VDSL modem fiasco holding me back (Thanks, again, to Bell).

Sorry, I'm babbling :)

Lovely logic there...

[denzacar]

Following such way of thinking, you'd have to conquer most of Europe and murder 6 million Jews before you could "take the piss" out of Hitler.

Don't forget commissioning a small economic car and being a vegetarian painter while doing all that.

Re:Lovely logic there...

[liamevo]

I was merely pointing out that there is some credibility that what he says is in the archive, actually is in the archive, and that acting as if it's just some script kiddie making stuff up has to ignore the fact that this kid has proven credible with the info already leaked.

Honest and for true?

[Hartree]

I've released a file which contains the complete plans for the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator which can blow up the earth.

The file is encrypted, and if the local parking meter attendants put anymore tickets on my suburban, I'll release the passphrase.

I really, really will!

That is all.

Re:Honest and for true?

[sconeu]

I cracked your encryption, and built it. Then I tried it out.

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. Where was the KABOOM? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering KABOOM!!!

Re:Honest and for true?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what you mean - just did the same thing and then lit the fuse. Now as it's getting down to the end I

*)@%U()@RU*()FO@*)%&*07#$(*!&#79yiuhskZfvhuiAUIR^&#*($(!@

Re:Honest and for true?

[Anonymous Coward]

All it did to me was blow my beak around to the back of my head.

net rates crashed

[Anonymous Coward]

did the whole worl start d/l'ing this when /. posted this article - seems like the 'net just got /.'d

Useless at any size

[AliasMarlowe]

This sounds like too large of an "insurance" to be useful. Most people don't have the bandwidth or the space to hold 1.7 TB of encrypted info.

Some of us do have the space[1] and bandwidth[2], but are utterly lacking in motivation to do so. Motivation would still be absent even if the file were unencrypted and the download had the blessing of the games companies. Big clue: we're not gamers, so we're not in thrall to games or gaming companies.

[1] We have 6 TB of available space in a single volume on a server at home
[2] We have 100Mbps symmetric fiber (with no caps) at home

Re:Useless at any size

[Anonymous Coward]

Crap... you beat me on available disk-space, have only about 3.5Tb free.... .. But i beat you on bandwidth.. Just upgraded to 1Gbps at home.....

Re:Useless at any size

[Anonymous Coward]

I know one ac who lives in kansas city

I have the key!

[Anonymous Coward]

But it is encrypted in case I get arrested.

Just another loser

[Anonymous Coward]

The "hacker" is a 17-year old script kiddie and pothead who's trying facing criminal charges for being a worthless fucking drug addict AND a malicious shitty hacker.

He needs to go to jail for a few years and grow the fuck up.

Alleged and Possible..

[Anonymous Coward]

Should the headline read "Hacker allegedly claims to have 1.7TB of data that could possibly be something". ?

I mean really. I can upload 1.7TB of cat pictures encrypted and claim it's CIA secrets. Right now he has nothing that one should describe as a "treasure trove"

Re:Alleged and Possible..

[maxwell demon]

Should the headline read "Hacker allegedly claims to have 1.7TB of data that could possibly be something". ?

I mean really. I can upload 1.7TB of cat pictures encrypted and claim it's CIA secrets. Right now he has nothing that one should describe as a "treasure trove"

Is there any reason to doubt that he really claims it? Because that's the meaning of "allegedly claims".

One step

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Someone please tell me City of Heroes code is in there! Help me, I'm dyin' here!

Beware, Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

I've released a 1.7MB file which contains the source to Slashdot. It's encrypted, and it's my insurance policy that Slashdot will continue posting news for nerds, and not post any more slashvertisements.

Re:Beware, Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, for the love of God, DO NOT OPEN THAT FILE !

Password

[Eleint]

Has someone downloaded this and tried the password "up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, select, start"?

Re:Password

[GodfatherofSoul]

I did, but I just keep launching fireballs out of my CDROM.

Re:Password

[Eleint]

I'm not sure if I'm more impressed that your CDROM can shoot fireballs or that you somehow put 1.7TB of information on something, anything, that fits into your CDROM. :)

Re:Password

[rts008]

...you somehow put 1.7TB of information on something, anything, that fits into your CDROM.

After all of the unlikely, improbable, and "Holy Shit! How did they even get the tray to close!" stuff I have encountered working on other people's PC's, I can only deduce that you have never worked tech support or repaired PC's for the public.

bank account number on site?

[Anonymous Coward]

He has an Australian bank account on his site and there is more than enough info out there to track him down in 5 minutes :)
This "insurance policy" might have been a good idea if he didn't have ongoing cases and not left a treasure of information online to track him down!

By next week his a*r*s*hole will be the size of arizona

Re:bank account number on site?

[mcl630]

He was already arrested and released on bail. No need to track him down.

I have all the Top Secret Data in the Universe

[adisakp]

Which I will release to the public in a 1.7TB archive. If I'm arrested, I will release the one-time pad decryption key.

Oh, so...

[denzacar]

You just accidentally wrote:

"When you start releasing info on yet to be confirmed or released hardware, services and sdk's, which are then verified, then you can take the piss."

Instead of:

"I'll take your word for it when you start releasing info on yet to be confirmed or released hardware, services and sdk's, which are then verified."

I don't know...
Your line still sounds a bit too confrontational and criticizing of OP's right to joke, instead of like pointing out the credibility of said \m/-1337-h4x0r-\m/.

So? If they have nothing to hide...

[mrdark5483]

I'm confused. If they have nothing to hide then they shouldn't worry about someone providing access to look over everything they do. They're probably worried because they're all criminals with something to conceal.

And application for homomorphic ops?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can any homomorphic operations be done to this file to determine it's legit? There was a story on that recently. Doesn't have to be decrypted.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks, slashdot. thanks for the endless rubbish articles based on the rants of idiots. well done.

Mister The Plague?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is totally giving me flashbacks from Hackers

Is it bad that I want him arrested now....

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean I got nothing against the guy but I just want to see someone call his bluff for what is obviously a flawed attempt at blackmail. And if he isn't bluffing please let him have the source code for Cities XL that game runs like a dog and would benefit from some serious code cleaning and multi-threading.

Site down?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't suppose anyone has a mirror link? superdae.se is down?

Great. Leisure Suit Larry 1.0 rides again...

[crovira]

I can not imagine any greater waste of bandwidth or disk space than wasting my life with this shit.

real name

[Eddy_D]

SuperDaeE Os0orne. Luckily his insurance is re-enforced with super sealskin bindings. Still an idiot though.

I can't decide who's stupider...

[AC-x]

I can't decide who's stupider, him or anyone who believes him.

Actually, no, it's definitely anyone who believes him.

how is that insurance?

[bloodhawk]

Soooo his idea of insurance is collect evidence that he is indeed guilty so that if he is arrested he will more easily be convicted and face even more extensive charges? I don't get it, exactly how is that insurance unless he really wants to ensure he gets his free meals and accommodation for at least an extra 10 years?

Upgrade my cell to solitary, please....

[TiggertheMad]

More to the point, unless the 1.7TB contains something of interest in the first place (ex: stolen source code that isn't encrypted), who is going to bother to download it? See, you have to give people an incentive to download that much shit before they are going to act as your own personal distributed storage service.

Bet when he gets arrested (not if), that there aren't any copies of his 'get out of jail card' in the wild.

Also, just for the record, have there ever been instances of anyone successfully blackmailing the cops into letting them go? Ever?

Re:Upgrade my cell to solitary, please....

[kkwst2]

Actually I disagree. All you have to do is convince people there is a good chance it contains something of interest. That it is encrypted might entice people to download it in the hopes of discovering the key or decrypting it. I'll take your bet. I'll bet you a 2 TB hard drive.

I'm also willing to bet someone has blackmailed authorities into letting them go. I'm also willing to bet that said authorities did not announce that they were letting the accused go because he had some really juicy dirt on them.

Re:Upgrade my cell to solitary, please....

[Anonymous Coward]

We wouldn't know, now would we?

Re:Upgrade my cell to solitary, please....

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucio_Urtubia
This guy only served six months because Citibank wanted the printing plates he used to forger their checks with.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucio_Urtubia

Re:Upgrade my cell to solitary, please....

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, just for the record, have there ever been instances of anyone successfully blackmailing the cops into letting them go? Ever?

Most likely there has been, just not in western developed nations. Maybe some politicians have pulled that one off, but i'm pretty sure common criminals have never succeeded in doing so, which is good. You can only let that cat out of the bag once.

Re: Upgrade my cell to solitary, please....

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm downloading the file right now. It's not like 2 tb is much these days, and with 12 tb in my nas I can afford to hold on to this for a while.

Re:Upgrade my cell to solitary, please....

[Anonymous Coward]

By all accounts, any situation in Mexico in which the Los Zetas are involved. "You have a nice family, friends, pets, neighborhood, co-workers, childhood friends and random passers-by. It'd be a pity if anything happened to all of them."

superdae.se issues

[Anonymous Coward]

Cant access the site. Did anyone save the magnet link of it?

Never gonna lock you up, never gonna let you go..

[TiggertheMad]

Bet its a 'Rick Astley video, re-sized to massive resolution and the password is 'RickrollAll'.

Plea Bargain

[Anonymous Coward]

Lawyer is going to advise you to take a plea bargain to stay off sex offender list. But you are still likely to get jail time and smeared by association.

Goatse doesn't need an attachment

[Anonymous Coward]

Goatse doesn't need an attachment, just a long rope to get the bottle back out.

A perverse incentive

[KingSkippus]

So are we, the public, supposed to now cheer him and and support him not getting arrested? Oh, hell no, I want all of those goodies released. I hope they arrest his ass, and the sooner, the better.

http://superdae.se/

[Anonymous Coward]

can anyone post the magnet link from http://superdae.se/

Mutually Assured Destruction FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

It would appear he's got the key release hooked up to a dead man's switch. Kinda funny actually, but it probably won't keep him from getting arrested if they think he is selling it already. Reminds me of when I was twelve and rigged a dead man's switch to delete the BBS I built and was Co-SysOp of if the SysOp killed my access again (He killed my access when I ran a sting and caught him cheating at Tradewars :))

FFS dual box it!

[slashmydots]

People in the 10th century fucking wish they could teleport their castle into another dimension that nobody else could get into. Then nobody could break in and steal anything. Fast forward to now. Get 2 routers, 2 servers, pairs of 2 PCs, and one modem. TADA! You've got a LAN #2 (like a VLAN except real and physically separated) and you put all your game and console development data on the separated one. Then use your other LAN for internet access. Every desk gets 2 PCs and the internet and e-mail cruiser can be a pentium G series chip with a 60GB SSD so really the extra costs aren't insane. Not one single person in the entire world could hack into network #2 because they never ever touch. Simple!

If you don't want your crap stolen, don't put it on the internet. Tada, magical trans-dimensional shifting super-fortress.

Cable's monthly cap means 768 kbps sustained

[tepples]

Any old copper telephone line supports at least 512kbit/s.

A DSL line supports service burstable to 512 kbps. But that's only if you happen to be able to afford real estate close enough to the DSLAM, as others pointed out. And for the file sizes we're talking about, the upstream is oversold. Comcast, for example, sells "6 Mbps", but if you read the fine print of the acceptable usage policy, you discover that that's a burst rate, and the 250 GB/mo cap makes it closer to 768 kbps sustained, or half a T1: 768 kbps * (86400 seconds/day) * (30 days/month) / (8000000 kbit/GB) = 248 GB/mo.

Burst billing

[tepples]

I guess you never heard of the possibiliy of direct server-to-server transfer, did you?

Internet connections in data centers have caps too, implicit in the phrasing x kbps burstable to y Mbps. For example, a 768 kbps CIR is comparable to the Comcast Cap of 250 GB per month.

More useless than useless

[quantaman]

I'm sure a lot of pirated dev kits are floating around already, as for the source code, who cares? Another game company isn't going to go near it, I guess in the worst case if everything is there a bunch of devs could get together, strip out all the drm, and release a really good pirated version, but I just don't see this being a big risk for the game companies.

Oh yeah,

Recently, Kotaku reported that SuperDaE, a 17 year-old minor, was facing an array of eight legal charges, including "possession of cannabis and drug paraphernalia", "possession of a prohibited weapon", "possession of identification material with intent to commit an offence", and "possessing and copying an indecent or obscene article, possession of child exploitation material".

So an Australian, being charged by Australian police for crimes that have nothing to do with computers, apparently thinks a bunch of American and Japanese game companies can protect him if he blackmails them?

Good luck with that...

I have the key.

[janerules]

He said if he is prevented access to a computer the file will be decrypted. He likely has the file set on an access timer, to self-decrypt if anything in his regular pattern changes. After all, what 17 year old has time to do anything but be on a computer?