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Moriendor
Black Ring Leader
Joined: 19 Jul 2001
Posts: 1306
Location: Germany |
| Half Life 2 Source Code leaked |
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This is in no way RPG related, of course, but definitely worth a post as criminal acts like these could have a serious impact on the gaming industry as a whole. Well, here's the whole story from Valve's Managing Director Gabe Newell (<a href="http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10692" target="_blank">link to original thread</a>):<em><blockquote>Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.
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<br>Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.
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<br>Here is what we know:
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<br>1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.
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<br>2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.
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<br>3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.
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<br>4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.
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<br>5) At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane. This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools).
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<br>6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.
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<br>Well, this sucks.
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<br>What I'd appreciate is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to, helpvalve@valvesoftware.com. If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.
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<br>We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community.
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<br>Gabe
<br>
<br>__________________
<br>Gabe Newell</em></blockquote> |
Fri Oct 03, 2003 2:43 pm |
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Jaz
Late Night Spook
Joined: 20 Jan 2002
Posts: 9708
Location: RPGDot |
A decidedly nasty affair.
_________________
Jaz |
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Fri Oct 03, 2003 2:47 pm |
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Ammon777
Warrior for Heaven
Joined: 20 Apr 2002
Posts: 2011
Location: United States |
Thats terrible news. Developers should never be targetted like that. |
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Fri Oct 03, 2003 3:03 pm |
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Guest
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If Valve finds who stole it, I hope that person receives maximum punishment for the theft. I think its a huge loss because valve spent so many years developing the source enging and to have it stolen negates all that hard work. |
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Fri Oct 03, 2003 3:39 pm |
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NeverDark
Village Leader
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
Posts: 91
Location: Virtual Reality aka Life |
I don't believe it. It sounds like a smart marketing move to me. Right now, HL2 generates as much buzz and hype around itself as no other game (does any one still remember about DoomIII? Anyone??). It's probably easier to hack into Pentagon's network than steal a source code from a game developer, especially from a one as famous and experienced as Valve. |
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Sun Oct 05, 2003 8:51 pm |
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Ammon777
Warrior for Heaven
Joined: 20 Apr 2002
Posts: 2011
Location: United States |
If you were a programmer like me you would understand that getting an entire project of mostly-functional state-of-the-art code is indeed a huge deal, especially it being for a top-of-the-line project like HL2. I know a lot of amateur C++ people who would love to get that code, including myself, so it doesnt surprise me in the least that some network hacker would go to great lengths to get it. |
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Mon Oct 06, 2003 2:10 am |
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Jung
Most Exalted Highlord
Joined: 19 Jun 2002
Posts: 411
Location: Texas |
Certain asian countries like China will not hesitate to rip off American software, but who knows if this is a trophy hack or for profit.
_________________
"You two are a regular ol' Three Musketeers." |
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Mon Oct 06, 2003 4:41 am |
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hwfanatic
Average Fanatic
Joined: 28 Oct 2002
Posts: 2850
Location: Belgrade, Serbia |
quote:
Originally posted by Ammon777
If you were a programmer like me you would understand...
True. Only a developer can trully understand. |
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Mon Oct 06, 2003 12:00 pm |
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cfmdobbie
High Emperor
Joined: 01 Jul 2002
Posts: 1859
Location: London, England |
Yes, it was quite interesting for a few days there watching the major news networks try to work out what it all meant...
_________________
Charlie Dobbie
=Member of The Nonflamers' Guild=
=Moderator of the Morrowind/Oblivion Forums= |
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Mon Oct 06, 2003 7:04 pm |
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Ammon777
Warrior for Heaven
Joined: 20 Apr 2002
Posts: 2011
Location: United States |
I imagine that the reason they are delaying the game HL2 is that they must re-organize the codebase so as to defend the game in the future from any kind of cheating technology that could potentially arise through the usage of that stolen code base.  In short, they're trying to stop whoever stole that code by changing their version of the code so that the game isnt compromised. That in a nutshell is the real reason for the delay, i imagine. I might be wrong, but thats the most likely reason. |
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Mon Oct 06, 2003 7:32 pm |
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Guest
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All right, it was me. I stole it. But only because the Ammonn777 said he would program it into Ultima Underworld remake. |
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Tue Oct 07, 2003 4:04 am |
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Guest
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That was Roqua that posted. I'm not automatically signed in, and too lazy to go through all that log it rickamaraw (sp?) |
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Tue Oct 07, 2003 4:06 am |
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