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Hacker Who Stole Half-Life 2's Source Code Interviewed For New Book (arstechnica.com)
"Can you love a game so much you must take its sequel?" asks Ars Technica, posting an excerpt from the new book "Death By Video Game: Danger, Pleasure, and Obsession on the Virtual Frontline."
At 6am on May 7, 2004, Axel Gembe awoke in the small German town of Schonau im Schwarzwald to find his bed surrounded by police officers bearing automatic weapons... "You are being charged with hacking into Valve Corporation's network, stealing the video game Half-Life 2, leaking it onto the Internet, and causing damages in excess of $250 million... Get dressed..." The corridors were lined by police, squeezed into his father's house...
Gembe had tried creating homegrown keystroke-recorders specifically targeted at Valve, according to the book, but then poking around their servers he'd discovered one which wasn't firewalled from the internal network. Gembe spent several weeks discovering notes and design documents, until eventually he stumbled onto the latest version of the unreleased game's source code. He'd never meant for the code to be leaked onto the internet -- but he did share it with another person who did. ("I didn't think it through. The person I shared the source with assured me he would keep it to himself. He didn't...")
Eventually Gembe contacted Valve, apologized, and asked them for a job -- which led to a fake 40-minute job interview designed to gather enough evidence to arrest him. But ultimately a judge sentenced him to two years probation -- and Half-Life 2 went on to sell 8.6 million copies.
Gembe had tried creating homegrown keystroke-recorders specifically targeted at Valve, according to the book, but then poking around their servers he'd discovered one which wasn't firewalled from the internal network. Gembe spent several weeks discovering notes and design documents, until eventually he stumbled onto the latest version of the unreleased game's source code. He'd never meant for the code to be leaked onto the internet -- but he did share it with another person who did. ("I didn't think it through. The person I shared the source with assured me he would keep it to himself. He didn't...")
Eventually Gembe contacted Valve, apologized, and asked them for a job -- which led to a fake 40-minute job interview designed to gather enough evidence to arrest him. But ultimately a judge sentenced him to two years probation -- and Half-Life 2 went on to sell 8.6 million copies.
Can we talk about that? Someone guessed Gabe Newell's password, downloaded some files, leaked them to the internet, and the response to this was to send a small army of heavily armed stormtroopers with automatic weapons to take him into custody with an absurd display of force.
That should be the real story here. We've gone past "corporate personhood" and into "corporate godhood", we're treating people whose only crime was potentially costing a fantastically wealthy corporation some pitiful percently of their quarterly profits the same way we treat active shooters and terrorists in the middle of an attack.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Because he caused a corporation to hypothetically lose some money, the worst possible crime in the US, and the Germans didn't want to see someone get some wildly disproportionate 50 year sentence for that.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
TFA says:
"But there were concerns about the ongoing access that Gembe had to Valve's servers and the potential damage he could still cause. So the FBI contacted the German police in order to alert them to the plan."
Not much of an expert here, but they talked to him for 40 minutes, asking him about the details of the breach, which he apparently was willing to explain in detail and they couldn't shut him out?
Due to the fact that judges are elected, you get people that are in for revenge, not for justice.
I see it as offical mob justice. "Hang em high" is what they voted for and that is what you get. That does not mean that it is in any way reasonable.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Almost none, as they accept the deal, reagardless if theyare guilty or not.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
He forgot to repeat "I didn't think it through" when he called Valve, told them he hacked into their server, copying the source code to their product, resulting in the source code for their main product being released publicly, and then asked for a job.
Is there any company where that situation would happen and it ends with "you're hired!"
Never underestimate the naivete and gullibility of a young person with a dream. Even as we speak, there are tens of thousands of kids across the country taking out huge student loans to get degrees that will barely qualify them for barista jobs at Starbucks--all because someone told them to "pursue your dreams" without adding the vital addendum "But have a realistic backup plan."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Media industry has nothing to do with it. Stealing is defined as 'taking something without permission', which is what this guy did. He took a copy of the code without permission. That is stealing.
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How would he have exfiltrated the data? He would have made a copy, then took that copy (out of memory in this case). You are being pedantic as all heck about that, so I feel I have a right to be pedantic back.
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Wow, you are all over this thread. Okay, here goes. They had their ideas, they stored them on their own computers. Someone hacked into them and stole them. They stole their ideas, that were rigidly defined. They copied them, they took the copy they made and had it in their possession. That is stealing. Taking something that doesn't belong to you IS stealing. The whole 'denying it to the owner' argument is BS. If I steal something physical from someone, then give it back in perfect condition before they need to use it again, that is still stealing.
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