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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.
At least they were kind enough to let him get dressed first.
The hacker's actions were a crime both in Germany and the United States. The crime is partly in the jurisdiction of the United States because it was against an American company. Normally it's pretty straightforward to extradite someone given the evidence. It was a courtesy for the FBI to notify German authorities of the plan and provide them with the evidence. I don't see any way the actions of the German authorities were justified to prevent the hacker from being charged and standing trial in the United States. This is a pretty straightforward application of how international cooperation between law enforcement agencies is supposed to work, yet Germany didn't let that happen.
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."
He should have just paid the $250M in damages instead of going to a court.
Retarded. You can't expect autocorrect to handle a name.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
"The person I shared the source with assured me he would keep it to himself. He didn't..."
Well duh.
Hacker stills: 7/10
Social skills: 0/10
The real retarded is the one who expects a job from who he stole from.
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!"
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
The Game contacted Valve - it had a built-in 'call home' feature...
"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..."
Can't stand how companies attach such arbitrary bullshit numbers to this kind of thing. Two-hundred and fifty million dollars is literally just a number some person with great self-interest in picking a huge exaggerated number pulled out their ass with no way to quantify in any realistic manner.
The nsa, on multiple occasions.
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?
So the NSA is stupid? I doubt this.
One of the key elements when it comes to hiring someone for a job in security is trust. Give me ONE good reason to trust someone who has already shown he has no problem betraying me.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Germany does not extradite its citizens (with very limited exceptions). It's in the constitution. Germany extraditing a German citizen to the US is about as straightforward as introducing a blanket ban on guns in the US - not gonna happen.
Especially not in a way that they can trace you.
The urban legend is as old as the one about the hooker asking the John whether he's a policeman and if he is he has to answer truthfully. He doesn't. Likewise, nobody is going to give you a job for hacking them.
Think about it: One of the key requirements when working for someone in such an environment is trust. He has to trust you that you will not sabotage his project, that you will not steal his project, that you will not allow others to gain access to it. All things that you would have the ability and means to if you wanted.
Why the hell should he trust you after you already showed you are not trustworthy?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
i always thought the main interest point was that valve lied about scripted ai.
Exfiltrated would be a better word. Illegally copying would be another few. Dangerously stupid yet more.
But understand this. As far as the majority of people would understand this, he 'stole' data. That is to say, the common definition for the word 'steal' includes copying something on a computer you do not have the right to.
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I guess you could view probation as a hypothetical jail sentence...
Can somebody please get on with making HL2Ep3, since Valve doesn't seem to give a f*** about it?
(then again, it's not like you need the source for this. Just get the team that remade HL1 as "Black Mesa")
Uh yes, there was a theft of a product. The fact that that product was virtual is irrelevant. The same as if you signed a contract to create some software, wrote the program, and then the company you wrote the program for refused to because you because "information wantz to be free!".
He actually thought Valve would give him a job after this stunt. He was on a call with them while they traced his location. What a winner! The German officials said he was lucky he didn't actually go to the US for a job interview as his sentence could have (would have?) been much much worse.
Dont be stupid...
Giving it to someone random on the internet and trusting them. Contact the company.... All of the above is incredibly stupid of you are a hacker.
Dear kiddies, rule #1 - keep your mouth shut.
Rule #2 - if you want to talk about something, see rule #1.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
"Eventually GEMBLE contacted Valve, apologized, and asked them for a job"
My mouth is still hanging open. Some people really, really have no idea how this world works.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
The common definition requires taking something away so that the original owner no longer has accessed to it.
[citation needed]
The common definition does not specify that at all. It is just 'taking something from the owner'.
...
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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He stole the time and the option of Valve to release their code as they pleased.
Someone needs to fucking steal episode 3 then!
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I see cop math is not limited to the USA.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
The common definition requires taking something away so that the original owner no longer has accessed to it.
[citation needed]
The common definition does not specify that at all. It is just 'taking something from the owner'.
Yeah, and if I copy your whatever, I haven't taken it.
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Read up on the Star Trek set thing. That story alone confirms it several times.
High ranking jobs at the NSA are a sinecure used as a reward for people that have never worked for a similar group before.
The "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" thing applies far more at the NSA than it did at FEMA.
No, it doesn't. Stealing means taking something that does not belong to you. If you steal my ideas, you've stolen them.
You are basically saying "I don't believe intellectual property is property, and I will redefine the language so that in the way I use it it is not property."
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/steal?s=t
I don't buy this, at all.
When you have an idea, that is as close as you can get intellectual property. That information is in your head and is yours. As soon as you tell anyone, without taking any steps to protect said information, or at least it's use (but that's something different) it's in their head too. You can make no claim or assertion as to what a person does with the information in their heads. You can make all the claims you want but there's no way at all to prove ownership, or that you were the originator of the idea, or that no one else had had it before (thusly being the actual IP owner). You can and should protect your ideas where you can if appropriate. What you shouldn't do is blab them and claim that it's your intellectual property because that shit don't fly.
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He took a copy of the code without permission. That is stealing.
He made a copy of the code. Unless you're insinuating there were two folders and he cut/took one leaving them one folder?
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Adobe and Cisco both went the jackboot route as well, with Cisco going as far as dragging a guy out of a court hearing for extra contempt for society. Both were over far more trivial things than this example.
It's cheaper to have him behind bars than having him on the payroll.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Unless the NSA is any different than other corporations (and why should it be?), the work is not done at the level where friends of friends are flattening their rump. It's quite possible or even likely that the people who are actually working there got their job the good old fashioned way, i.e. by knowing something and being able to do something.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Very few people who think just like me would consider copying a form of theft.
Fixed that for you. None of the common dictionary definitions for "steal" mention depriving the original owner of anything. The one that seems most appropriate in this context is, "to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment."
The fact that someone is familiar with the accepted meaning of words does not mean they've been brainwashed by the media industry. That you subscribe to a non-standard definition suggests that you've been engaging in a practice commonly referred to as "drinking your own bathwater."
No product was stolen. The guy may have violated several laws, but he did not remove any objects from their owner's possession - the essential condition for an act to be defined as theft. It wasn't theft anymore than it was arson, loitering or fishing without a permit.
It's fascinating to me that this mischaracterization of the meaning of "steal" has hung around for as long as it has. I suspect that most of the people who believe this have never bothered themselves to consult a dictionary.
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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Sure you did, you copied it and took the copy for yourself. You now have it in your possession. Tell me how that isn't taking?
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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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You are incorrect: identity theft.
You can't have years of useless leaders with sustaining some sort of damage. If you want to compare it to corporations then Enron style damage, but there is less of a reality check here since corporations usually have to pay some attention to balance sheets so epic fuckups can cost the useless near the top of a corporation their jobs.
If you look up the Snowden stuff (which would never have happened if the NSA has their shit together instead of employing dodgy subcontractors) you can see for yourself that the place is full of toy soldiers instead of the competency your wishful thinking suggests. There has been a lot of other stuff in the press too.
Those losers actually think polygraphs work like Wonder Woman's lariat of truth FFS! With such a major mistake do you really think all the stuff that has come out about systemic incompetence was made up?
If you still don't believe me then remember what happened to NASA after years of it's management being full of people rewarded for their political connections instead of promoted due to ability.
It's not taking because it's still where it was. It copying because as well as that one there's now this one. In fact if you think about it it's closer to bringing, the opposite of taking.
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How would he 'exfiltrate' the data? It flies half way around though a series of tubes as teeny tiny little bits of electricity that get written down by his computer really fast as they come in (if we're really being pedantic). How is that taking?
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*half way around the world
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That post was about the concept of intellectual property itself, not the merits of theft vs unauthorised copying.
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They had their ideas, they stored them on their own computers.
Okay.
Someone hacked into them and stole them.
No.
They stole their ideas,
No.
that were rigidly defined.
So?
They copied them,
Yes.
they took the copy they made
No. You don't "take a copy you make". You just "make a copy". Then there's a copy, and the original. That's why it's not stealing.
and had it in their possession.
They had in their possession a copy of some copyrighted material. That is copyright infringement.
That is stealing.
No. It's theft. If it were stealing, it would have been covered by existing law, and there would have been no need to create copyright law. But theft is fundamentally different because someone is deprived of something. Aha, you say, but when you violate copyright, someone is deprived of their right to control copies! But, I say, that "right" is an artificial one created for the purpose of profit, and not even for its stated purpose of encouraging participation in the arts — which itself would not be sufficient justification for its creation, even if it were true, which it patently is not .
If you want to argue that copyright should be a thing, fine. Make that argument, without resorting to lies like suggesting that it is theft when it is not. The crime is called copyright infringement and it is distinctly different from theft.
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.
Yes. And if you copy someone's copyrighted media, "consume" it (which is also an inappropriate word, hence the quotes — nothing is actually consumed in the process) and then delete your copy without them finding out, you are still illegally violating their copyright. But it's still not theft, no matter how many times you insist that it is. You will never be able to prosecute someone for theft when they engaged in copyright infringement, any more than you can prosecute them for copyright infringement when they steal a CD from the mall.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
He took a copy of the code without permission. That is stealing.
No. He made a copy of the code (that is, he copied it) without permission. That is copyright infringement. You could make a strong argument that it was theft if he had deleted the original after making a copy, putting aside the potential existence of backups which are not really relevant to the argument since to an attacker, they are imaginary.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's fascinating to me that this mischaracterization of the meaning of "steal" has hung around for as long as it has. I suspect that most of the people who believe this have never bothered themselves to consult a dictionary.
No. They know the truth. They are simply willfully denying it in order to support some other belief that can't handle the notion that copyright infringement is not theft. Probably it has to do with justifying the amount of money they've spent on their My Little Pony DVD collection.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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."
Plus, there are a number of tales of "former hackers" hired for security work. The part of the story that usually gets left out of discussions of this phenomena is the amount of jail time or legal charges the person had to sort out before they got that job. Very few of them jumped from "I totally committed a felony you were the victim of" to "I'd like $150k and a car allowance."
Who did what now?
It's fascinating to me that this mischaracterization of the meaning of "steal" has hung around for as long as it has.
IS it a mischaractarization, really? I mean, look we're talking about something that in the physical world has a very specific meaning, AND a very specific set of psychological and physical effects that fail to be present when something is digitally copied . I doubt, for example, that you'd have the same sort of horror if someone copied your laptop, and walked away with it, than you would if they actually just outright stole it. I realize I am not the best at articulating my thoughts, so if I am unclear as to what I am tying to say, say so. :D
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
It's fascinating to me that this mischaracterization of the meaning of "steal" has hung around for as long as it has.
IS it a mischaractarization, really? I mean, look we're talking about something that in the physical world has a very specific meaning, AND a very specific set of psychological and physical effects that fail to be present when something is digitally copied .
Psychological and physical effects have nothing at all to do with the definition of "steal". Now, if he were being sued for emotional distress, you might be on to something. It's really not that complicated. If you're in possession of something that doesn't belong to you as a result taking that something without the owner's permission, you have stolen it. And please note that the definition of "take" doesn't have anything to do with depriving the original owner of possession.
These theoretical damages were clearly based on pre-release speculation. However, most charges are also based on theoretical damages long before any evidence of actual damage. The video game went on to do better than its prequel which suggests damages were minimal. Why can prosecutions in America occur faster than the actual production of evidence (sales numbers)? It is like a prosecution finalizing its arguments before the DNA can be sequenced so it can be excluded.
You'd think.
But yeah.
They even have booths at Defcon these days. Although their first high profile hires were recent convicts. I forget the pseudonyms.
Until he gets out, and does it again. This time, with more knowledge of what not to do in order to stay undetected.
Some people think author-fan constitutes a relationship and the y always tend this side with the fan.
There is no one common definition just a handful of pretty common ones that people throw around as they see fit.
Abuse of the language is the only correct use of the language.
This is fun. Two people muddying it up with legal meaning vs. common meaning and theft vs. infringement. Reality appears largely to be ignored as per usual. There is a cesspool of ideas; and patents at the very least are written to try to more as many future developers as possible. There are three dumps of Microsoft OS code on torrents it isn't knocking on my door to get back and legal definitions sometimes only matter when you are actually in court. Except when you can convince the other person legality matters early on and it is in your favor.
What does it say to equate conventions with standards. Dictionaries neither document nor set standards but merely conventions.
Both of you started out being pedantic.
Considering that rabid fans are part of some emotional cult that is a good idea, sure
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Yes.
If you find something in a path in the woods, and no owner is around, and you take it, then it is stealing because it did not belong to you.
Other definitions are an artifact of the big cities, where picking someone's pocket as they walk by is just good clean fun. 8-P