>"Have you any idea how lucky you are that we got to you before you got on that plane?"
That's the most important thing I took away from this article.
The kid did something stupid and it almost ruined his life because he almost got onto a plane that would have taken him to the FBI & US justice system.
Instead local authorities got a hold of him and he learned a vocation waiting for a trial (programming) & having shown he was willing to be a functional member of society, he received a few years of probation.
In the US the FBI would have put him on trial for the absurdly high $250M hacking theft and spent a decade or more in jail.
There's some differences:
1. He would the right to a public trial, there'd be free press coverage.
2. He'd have the right to a lawyer.
3. There wouldn't be political interference in the trial.
4. The majority of Chinese people that this happens to are political prisoners. I.e. they critisized their government. This guy commited a crime that is recognised in both the USA and Germany, there's no argument about that.
Of course. The concept of authoritarianism isn't exclusive to communist and/or fascist regimes. They can and do exist in all modern forms of government all over.
And the FBI, having no leads and no data, simply attempted to arrest a kid whom they knew got past Valve's firewall. The court judged there was no connection between the kid and the damages, and the FBI attempted to ruin his life anyway.
Oh, and those, of course, were claimed damages that failed to materialize ... Having about the same validity of the RIAA's claims of $25000 per mp3 downloaded.
The article claims/repeats the claim that this cost valve $250 million, but I don't see how. If the leaked version wasn't very playable the damage can't come from lost sales
yeah that is just "let's throw random numbers to victimize ourselves even more".
I don't think a lot of people downloaded the unfinished source code, compiled it, played the game and never bought the conplete game.
The worst that happened were people making memes with some 3d and graphics assets which didn't cost anyrhing to Valve. Quite the opposite it was free advertising.
The justice department has absurd ways of determining how much damages were caused by unauthorized access. Kevin Mitnick talks about it in his book "Ghost in the Wires", but he was accused of causing $1.5mil in damages to DEC or Sun or something because he copied code, printed it out on paper, and kept it for himself (he didn't distribute it to anyone else). Fortunately, he was ultimately only ordered to pay a few thousand in restitution.
In around 10th grade a friend and I got the leak just as it came out and then used it to make the characters lips sync to our voices for a chemistry class project. The engine worked, the lips matching word tech was awesome, and people couldn’t believe what we pulled off.
Imagine that intro scene in HL2 where you walk through a trap door Pepsi vending machine and behind it there’s a lab - and instead of talking about HL2 stuff, Alyx and company talk about sampling and testing local natural water sources.
But I did use it as inspiration for an 3D engine project at school, they had geometrical formulas I had trouble to find online, at least efficiently implemented. It helped a bit in reverse engineering their map format too so I could just display any sort of already made map.
I imagine that if I branched out in gaming it would have been a nice bonus, it's not everyday you get to see the competition's code. I suppose they lost in opportunity cost to license their thing, a bit ?
Yeh I recall the leaked version quickly gained a poor reputation. I had zero interest in downloading or playing it. Not surprised that sales of the final release were unaffected.
Some of it may come from them rebuilding a lot of the game after the leak, but that was arguably an unnecessary exercise to protect their IP. Even then, not close to that figure. Federal agencies are keen to protect corporations' quarterly profits, even if it ruins people's lives. Nothing new about that.
This kid went of his way to reach out to Valve and apologize for what he did, because he felt guilty. Valve's response was to forward his message to the FBI and organize a sting operation.
I realize he broke the law, but only because he wanted to play Half-Life 2. It was done out of love for what Valve themselves created.
I can't disagree more. He built malware, and distributed it to steal game keys. Then, he stole and published the hl2 source. It's a lot more than just wanting to play a game early.
Yes. HL2 is how Axel became known to gamers, but it's nearly irrelevant. He also created the most popular open source malware framework (Agobot) in existence at the time. Millions of systems were enlisted in botnets based on variants of his work (which were usually just recompilations with IRC C&C server changes). He didn't typically talk about running a botnet, but many of the other minor project collaborators and IRC regulars did.
> To this day, Gembe maintains he was not the person who uploaded the source code to the internet. But there's no denying he handed it over to whoever did. [...] "The person I shared the source with assured me he would keep it to himself. He didn't."
Was this dumb? Yes. I still think Valve could have been more sympathetic. My ire would be for the person who actually leaked the source publicly.
Do you disagree with the article or did you just not believe it? Because, Gembe denied publishing the source code and there was no evidence that Gembe is the one who published it.
That kid destroyed the life of many people for quite some time. Now I can agree that this is the kind of situation where what he did VS the consequences of what he did are disproportionate, which is the issue with computer/cyber crimes in general. Some kind of punishment is required here, I think Valve did the right thing, now the Justice System...
You really can't just throw out a line like "destroyed a lot of lives" when we are talking about an essentially useless leak of a video game without further explanation.
Article is from 2011 (figured that out after I read the whole thing).
I wonder if in in the interim anything else happened to Gembe. Somehow, I kinda want to hear he ended up at Valve in a turnaround of events, but I highly doubt it.
I can't imagine Valve would ever hire him, given the lengths they went to assisting the FBI with the fake entrapment style job interview. Also sets a horrible precedent that you can hold the company ransom over stolen code to get a job if nothing else!
That's easy to know, just look up "Xbox Underground" and you'll know what happens when you get caught by the FBI accessing video games developers networks and leaking games:
Yeah, you know you are in Germany when the police even tells you that :D Epic..
> There he was greeted by the police chief. He walked up to Gembe, looked him in the eye and said, "Have you any idea how lucky you are that we got to you before you got on that plane?"
Readit News
That's the most important thing I took away from this article.
The kid did something stupid and it almost ruined his life because he almost got onto a plane that would have taken him to the FBI & US justice system.
Instead local authorities got a hold of him and he learned a vocation waiting for a trial (programming) & having shown he was willing to be a functional member of society, he received a few years of probation.
In the US the FBI would have put him on trial for the absurdly high $250M hacking theft and spent a decade or more in jail.
The CCP and the FBI have different values, but it’s entirely the same concept.
Oh, and those, of course, were claimed damages that failed to materialize ... Having about the same validity of the RIAA's claims of $25000 per mp3 downloaded.
I don't think a lot of people downloaded the unfinished source code, compiled it, played the game and never bought the conplete game.
The worst that happened were people making memes with some 3d and graphics assets which didn't cost anyrhing to Valve. Quite the opposite it was free advertising.
Imagine that intro scene in HL2 where you walk through a trap door Pepsi vending machine and behind it there’s a lab - and instead of talking about HL2 stuff, Alyx and company talk about sampling and testing local natural water sources.
I imagine that if I branched out in gaming it would have been a nice bonus, it's not everyday you get to see the competition's code. I suppose they lost in opportunity cost to license their thing, a bit ?
Some people might have tried, but that doesn't sound like it was a great gaming experience. If it ran at all.
I think my buddy burned it to 3 CD-Rs and it spread around my gaming friends in HS pretty quickly.
It wasn't a proper game yet for sure, but as a 2003 tech demo the beta was one of the best, you could recreate the legendary E3 demo [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ddJ1OKV63Q
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/what-drove-one-half-l...
This kid went of his way to reach out to Valve and apologize for what he did, because he felt guilty. Valve's response was to forward his message to the FBI and organize a sting operation.
I realize he broke the law, but only because he wanted to play Half-Life 2. It was done out of love for what Valve themselves created.
Deleted Comment
> To this day, Gembe maintains he was not the person who uploaded the source code to the internet. But there's no denying he handed it over to whoever did. [...] "The person I shared the source with assured me he would keep it to himself. He didn't."
Was this dumb? Yes. I still think Valve could have been more sympathetic. My ire would be for the person who actually leaked the source publicly.
Do you disagree with the article or did you just not believe it? Because, Gembe denied publishing the source code and there was no evidence that Gembe is the one who published it.
Dead Comment
I wonder if in in the interim anything else happened to Gembe. Somehow, I kinda want to hear he ended up at Valve in a turnaround of events, but I highly doubt it.
He did ask for a job, but the article doesn't say anything about him ransoming the code!
It really sounds to me like he just wanted to play Half-Life 2.
Short version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Underground
Long version: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/45/
In short they got sentenced to 18 to 24 months of prison.
> There he was greeted by the police chief. He walked up to Gembe, looked him in the eye and said, "Have you any idea how lucky you are that we got to you before you got on that plane?"
The boy who stole Half Life 2 source code (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7830881 - June 2014 (153 comments)
The Boy Who Stole Half-Life 2 (Source Code) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3477834 - Jan 2012 (1 comment)
The Boy Who Stole Half-Life 2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2245786 - Feb 2011 (125 comments)
https://archive.ph/z6qbR