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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."
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!
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.
US courts have a tendency to hand down draconian sentences for even trivial infractions thanks to the 'come down on him like a ton of bricks' attitude to justice among politically ambitious US judges and prosecutors. This has resulted in an extreme reluctance in other countries to extradite people to the US in cases where there is any chance that the prisoner might receive 25 years to life just to further some US offiial's political ambitions for something he'd get a 5 year sentence for in Europe .
The nsa, on multiple occasions.
.... 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.
Germany generally won't extradite their own citizens to stand trial in a foreign country. This has some cultural significance because the DDR (East Germany) used to extradite citizens to the USSR for alleged political crimes.
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?
US courts have a tendency to hand down draconian sentences for even trivial infractions thanks to the 'come down on him like a ton of bricks' attitude to justice among politically ambitious US judges and prosecutors.
My understanding is that many judges in the USA are elected, so I wouldn't put the blame on the judges but on the electors. You just get what you (collectively) asked for, for better or worse.
This has resulted in an extreme reluctance in other countries to extradite people to the US
I'm not sure about that. However, some countries, and this includes Germany, forbid extradition of their own nationals.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
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.
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.
Germany. Not USA.
The USA held the record for the longest prison sentence for computer hacking for quite a while. Turkey recently stepped up, however, and showed us all what over-the-top really means.
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.
Really? Because it says right there in the article that they arrested Gembe because he'd written malware that used the same exploit as another hacker that they arrested on the same day and thought the two might be connected. Seems like a pretty obvious justification. Maybe you just didn't want to see it.
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!".
I guess, that's how much Valve had to pay the makers of the Havoc physics engine, when it was discovered, that they had copied their code verbatim into the HL2 source
From the article:
Sounds like they were most interested in an unrelated crime, but that the Valve case gave them the opportunity to arrest and interrogate him.
Monkeywrench Ex Machina.
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.
No, just a half life.
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 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.
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.