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I found the story to be quite tragic. This kid really saw the people at Valve as his heroes. Valve knew this and totally abused of that fact. They tricked him a

by ztan 16y ago

I found the story to be quite tragic. This kid really saw the people at Valve as his heroes. Valve knew this and totally abused of that fact. They tricked him and was planning to hand him to the FBI, despite the fact he was (still is) their biggest fan and that the leak was accidental. I would have really hired him if I was in Gabe's position. He had both passion and skills. I think he would make an awesome YC applicant if he directed those to creating a web startup.

twidlit 16y ago
Considering how good Valve is making fanbases, the number of hackpplicants would then be untenable.
- ztan 16y ago
  As far as I know he was the only one who have succeeded in not only hacking in, but also not being traced back despite all of Valves efforts. (They even got the FBI involved.) How many of the "hackpplicants" can you say the same about? The only reason Valve even knew who did it was because he came forward to them. He admired Gabe and his team so much that his dream is to join them. All of this indicate to me that he would make an awesome employee. I have little doubt that he would have poured his heart and soul into the company had he been given the chance. In fact that is the main reason why I found the story to be so tragic.
  - twidlit 16y ago
    My point is it would encourage more people to apply by trying to hack into the company's networks instead of just creating impressive mods, Valve is a game dev/platform company after all not a network security one.
    - ztan 16y ago
      Ahh, I see. Point taken. I would still hire this passionate kid and put him on the network security team. I would then make a public announcement about how the job you get depends on what skill you demonstrate. Which should be the way it works anyways. If you want to join us as a game developer then you need to demonstrate your game developing passion and skills. Either through creating mods with our SDK/platform or writing/creating your own from scratch. However if you want to join us as a network security expert then you got to beat this kid we just hired! =P
      - khafra 16y ago
        If any time you were hacked, you fired the previous network security engineer and hired the guy who just broke in, you'd have a network unusuable by legitimate users and still probably vulnerable to skilled attackers.
        ztan 16y ago
        Who said anything about firing? How does hiring one guy on to join the team == firing of all of the previous guys? Is there a one man network security team rule at Valve that I'm suppose to know about?
        khafra 16y ago
        If you hire somebody to your security team every time your network is compromised, and never fire anybody, your network security team will outnumber the rest of your company.
  - namdnay 16y ago
    I agree with your point, but we shouldn't forget that this article is clearly sympathetic to the kid. Maybe he isn't quite as cute and cuddly as they make out.
Tiomaidh 16y ago
Eight years later, it's easy to read an article and empathize with him. But if someone sent me an email that said, "I kinda stole your multi-million dollar source code, but really do like you and want to be friends." I would not be very trusting.
- ztan 16y ago
  I think it highly depends on the delivery. I've mentioned this in another comment lower in the thread. Basically, had he contacted Valve and informed them about security the flaws and then shared the source code with Valve to show/prove the potential danger (instead of the guy who leaked it,) I don't think it's totally unreasonable for Valve to hire him on to the security team after he truly demonstrates skill and passion for the company.
zx76 16y ago
Once, when riding through a neighbor's land as a shortcut to a far piece of his own ranch, Theodore Roosevelt and some of his men came across a stray calf. The rules of the range were that any stray calf would be branded with the mark of whoever owned the land on which the calf was found, and everyone carried branding irons of his neighbor's for that purpose. Roosevelt built a fire, but one of his men put Roosevelt's brand on the calf. Roosevelt fired him on the spot. The man protested that he had put Roosevelt's brand on the calf, and Roosevelt replied "Any man who would steal for me would steal from me."
- ztan 16y ago
  This is a nice story however I don't think the same principal should apply in this case. You have to look at intention of the behavior to judge ones character like Roosevelt did. In Roosevelt's case the intention was clear, the guy took away from another and knowingly disregarded the loss the other guy suffered. It's this character of hurting others to benefit self that made the behavior bad and immoral. In this kid's case, information was copied. The intention was not to take away sacarce resource for self benfit. He got the source simply because the act of looking produced a copy. Not because he was trying to seek self gain. You should not equate the two and pass the same judgement of character simply because we tend to label both acts as "theft." They are completely different. I really think there should be another word to distinct between these different acts.
  - Tycho 16y ago
    He took away something so scarce it's irreplaceable: their secrecy/confidentiality. And if it wasn't for self-gain, who on Earth's gain was it? He committed a pre-meditated (for months) crime to fulfil his own whims.
    - ztan 16y ago
      I disagree with you if you are saying that he had planned for months with the intention of taking away Valve's secrecy and confidentiality so he can hurt them and as a result gain something from it. There is no question that a crime has been committed. What we are debating about is whether he exhibited the same immoral character that Roosevelt condemned. I believe that no he did not exhibit the condemned character of intentionally hurting others for self gain - at least not through his actions of making a copy of Valve's source code. One of the reasons I believe that is because the ramifications of making copies of someone else's information is not very obvious compared to taking away a physical object from them. When you take something tangible from someone it is immediately clear that the other person will be suffering a loss. However the act of looking at files stored in a remote server (and as a result creating copies) is much less obvious. I think it is very plausible that the kid was just trying to see the state/progress of the game that he has been anticipating so long for (4 years) and simply did not think about the ramification of his actions. This is totally different than the pre-meditation of a crime with the intention to put another party at harm. He has zero motivations to harm Valve. He sees them as his heroes and still is a big fan.
oemera 16y ago
I know he was young and didn't think about it but what he should have done is get into Valve network, watch it for 2 weeks, copy some source code to proof it AND after that say: "Hey Gabe, you know what I love Valve and I love all of you guys. You are all my biggest heroes BUT you know your security systems aren't good. I hacked your system and it was quite easy. For two weeks no-one even noticed it. I DIDN'T steal anything but if you give me a job I will do my best to pretend such security issues and make your system as secure as I can. Would consider giving me a job? I attached some source code of Half-Life 2 to proof my abilities. I hope you all best and hope to hear from you back. Thanks" I really think that this would bring in the job.
- deleted 16y ago
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by ztan 16y ago

twidlit 16y ago

Considering how good Valve is making fanbases, the number of hackpplicants would then be untenable.

ztan 16y ago
As far as I know he was the only one who have succeeded in not only hacking in, but also not being traced back despite all of Valves efforts. (They even got the FBI involved.) How many of the "hackpplicants" can you say the same about? The only reason Valve even knew who did it was because he came forward to them. He admired Gabe and his team so much that his dream is to join them. All of this indicate to me that he would make an awesome employee. I have little doubt that he would have poured his heart and soul into the company had he been given the chance. In fact that is the main reason why I found the story to be so tragic.
- twidlit 16y ago
  My point is it would encourage more people to apply by trying to hack into the company's networks instead of just creating impressive mods, Valve is a game dev/platform company after all not a network security one.
  - ztan 16y ago
    Ahh, I see. Point taken. I would still hire this passionate kid and put him on the network security team. I would then make a public announcement about how the job you get depends on what skill you demonstrate. Which should be the way it works anyways. If you want to join us as a game developer then you need to demonstrate your game developing passion and skills. Either through creating mods with our SDK/platform or writing/creating your own from scratch. However if you want to join us as a network security expert then you got to beat this kid we just hired! =P
    - khafra 16y ago
      If any time you were hacked, you fired the previous network security engineer and hired the guy who just broke in, you'd have a network unusuable by legitimate users and still probably vulnerable to skilled attackers.
      - ztan 16y ago
        Who said anything about firing? How does hiring one guy on to join the team == firing of all of the previous guys? Is there a one man network security team rule at Valve that I'm suppose to know about?
        khafra 16y ago
        If you hire somebody to your security team every time your network is compromised, and never fire anybody, your network security team will outnumber the rest of your company.
- namdnay 16y ago
  I agree with your point, but we shouldn't forget that this article is clearly sympathetic to the kid. Maybe he isn't quite as cute and cuddly as they make out.

Tiomaidh 16y ago

Eight years later, it's easy to read an article and empathize with him. But if someone sent me an email that said, "I kinda stole your multi-million dollar source code, but really do like you and want to be friends." I would not be very trusting.

ztan 16y ago
I think it highly depends on the delivery. I've mentioned this in another comment lower in the thread. Basically, had he contacted Valve and informed them about security the flaws and then shared the source code with Valve to show/prove the potential danger (instead of the guy who leaked it,) I don't think it's totally unreasonable for Valve to hire him on to the security team after he truly demonstrates skill and passion for the company.

zx76 16y ago

Once, when riding through a neighbor's land as a shortcut to a far piece of his own ranch, Theodore Roosevelt and some of his men came across a stray calf. The rules of the range were that any stray calf would be branded with the mark of whoever owned the land on which the calf was found, and everyone carried branding irons of his neighbor's for that purpose. Roosevelt built a fire, but one of his men put Roosevelt's brand on the calf. Roosevelt fired him on the spot. The man protested that he had put Roosevelt's brand on the calf, and Roosevelt replied "Any man who would steal for me would steal from me."

ztan 16y ago
This is a nice story however I don't think the same principal should apply in this case. You have to look at intention of the behavior to judge ones character like Roosevelt did. In Roosevelt's case the intention was clear, the guy took away from another and knowingly disregarded the loss the other guy suffered. It's this character of hurting others to benefit self that made the behavior bad and immoral. In this kid's case, information was copied. The intention was not to take away sacarce resource for self benfit. He got the source simply because the act of looking produced a copy. Not because he was trying to seek self gain. You should not equate the two and pass the same judgement of character simply because we tend to label both acts as "theft." They are completely different. I really think there should be another word to distinct between these different acts.
- Tycho 16y ago
  He took away something so scarce it's irreplaceable: their secrecy/confidentiality. And if it wasn't for self-gain, who on Earth's gain was it? He committed a pre-meditated (for months) crime to fulfil his own whims.
  - ztan 16y ago
    I disagree with you if you are saying that he had planned for months with the intention of taking away Valve's secrecy and confidentiality so he can hurt them and as a result gain something from it. There is no question that a crime has been committed. What we are debating about is whether he exhibited the same immoral character that Roosevelt condemned. I believe that no he did not exhibit the condemned character of intentionally hurting others for self gain - at least not through his actions of making a copy of Valve's source code. One of the reasons I believe that is because the ramifications of making copies of someone else's information is not very obvious compared to taking away a physical object from them. When you take something tangible from someone it is immediately clear that the other person will be suffering a loss. However the act of looking at files stored in a remote server (and as a result creating copies) is much less obvious. I think it is very plausible that the kid was just trying to see the state/progress of the game that he has been anticipating so long for (4 years) and simply did not think about the ramification of his actions. This is totally different than the pre-meditation of a crime with the intention to put another party at harm. He has zero motivations to harm Valve. He sees them as his heroes and still is a big fan.

oemera 16y ago

I know he was young and didn't think about it but what he should have done is get into Valve network, watch it for 2 weeks, copy some source code to proof it AND after that say: "Hey Gabe, you know what I love Valve and I love all of you guys. You are all my biggest heroes BUT you know your security systems aren't good. I hacked your system and it was quite easy. For two weeks no-one even noticed it. I DIDN'T steal anything but if you give me a job I will do my best to pretend such security issues and make your system as secure as I can. Would consider giving me a job? I attached some source code of Half-Life 2 to proof my abilities. I hope you all best and hope to hear from you back. Thanks" I really think that this would bring in the job.

deleted 16y ago
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