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Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools
- kawzeg 5y agoDiscussions on the BBC article about the incident: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27468766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27468766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27462952
- mlatu 5y ago"steal"... it's still there, no?
- Otek 5y agoI take it you think pirating things is not stealing either?
- ReptileMan 5y agoIt's not. And with more and more drm nowadays piracy is actually something of a must if you are to enjoy the product you paid for.
- Otek 5y agoIt's you paid for it, it's not a piracy.
- scambier 5y ago"Stealing" a digital product implies that every stolen copy is a net loss for the distributor. It's definitely not.
- intricatedetail 5y agoSo how would you call it?
- Otek 5y agoOf course, it's not like if you clone a file on your hard drive 10 times, the manufacturer of what you're cloning loses tenfold. But every person who has used the product without paying for it is such a loss. I don't know what the "every stolen copy" argument has to do with anything. Not everyone who downloaded would have bought. But that can't simply be calculated with some neat "every stolen copy" slogan. It is an argument to justify the thieves.
- scambier 5y agoYour post is a bit unclear to me, I'm not sure which side of the argument you're defending, but > every person who has used the product without paying for it is such a loss. No, because like you said, that implies that you'd have bought the product if pirating it wasn't possible. If I want to pirate a game but it's not available, I won't buy it either. > It is an argument to justify the thieves. I'm not justifying "theft" - or piracy in this case -, I'm just saying that you can't equate the two. Piracy and theft are two very different things, with different motives, and different consequences of the distributor.
- mercora 5y ago> but every person who has used the product without paying for it is such a loss. i bought lots of products only after pirating them. would i not have done that i would not have bought many things at all. I also fondly remember simply not having the funds to buy software and pirating them was the only way to move forward. in both cases my "stolen" copy should not account for a loss of sale and the former even supported making a sale at all....
- krona 5y agoStealing implies someone being deprived of something. I don't condone pirating but the argument isn't invalidated merely because it 'justifies' the act itself.
- mercora 5y agofor me stealing implies change of possession. this does not apply here. what might have been taken is the possibility to monetize it the way they imagined or that they had been hurt by the PR afterwards and similar things. but nothing has been stolen everything is still in place were it was before and nothing is missing except for some of the confidence in their infrastructure security.
- khazhoux 5y ago"Hello, I'm calling to report that the 16-digit sequence, expiration date, and 3-digit security code of my credit card have been replicated and are now known to persons whom I did not give permission to utilize." "Sir, are you calling because your credit card was stolen?" "It was not stolen!! I still retain possession."
- mercora 5y ago... "hello, my credit card data has been acquired and used without permission. I still possess the card but want you to freeze the account and a new card mailed to me afterwards." do you see how this is just more accurate?
- oarsinsync 5y agoSo I'm reasonably sure that if you dont cancel the card after losing possession, you can be held liable for transactions that occur with the card at that point. Especially if your PIN is also compromised. You're not liable for transactions that occur fraudulently when you still retain possession of the card. So yeah, it's an important distinction.
- dabeledo 5y agoin the same way that you can steal secrets
- danielheath 5y agoWhen I copy your secrets, you no longer have secrets - just information that someone else also has. When I copy your code, you still have the code.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoThey are still secrets so long as you dont go punlish them but use them yourself
- laszlokorte 5y agobefore you copy my code I own [the only copy] after you steel/copy it I no longer own [the only copy]
- elb2020 5y agoIf you steal my secret code, then I no longer have secret code. The question is whether the secrecy itself has value. I may perceive that it does, and you may conveniently perceive that it doesn't. It's a dubious mindset, to believe that it's your own call to decide whether something should be of value to someone else.
- EvilEy3 5y agoCode is worthless on it's own.
- okamiueru 5y agoNot sure what the benefit is of turning this into semantics. "Get a hold of" is what is implied here, everyone should understand that. As such, getting hung up on "stealing" is rather pointless.
- mercora 5y agoit is likely that way because it is an argument that often comes up when discussing losses accumulated through piracy. were the argument typically is that not every copy should be accounted for a loss of sale. it does not really apply here because this game will probably sell the same amount as before someone got a hold of the code. And if it does not its likely because of some second order issue arising like not being able to fight cheaters...
- okamiueru 5y agoI suppose. But, this has very little to do with piracy. The source code wasn't acquired in order to compile bootleg versions of the game, and thus leading to loss of sales. This is the illegal gain of someone else's intellectual property. "Stealing" is a reasonable word to use in this context.
- toyg 5y agoBut the wider point is that "intellectual property" cannot effectively be "stolen", only "unlawfully obtained or reproduced". Nobody is ever deprived of IP or even its legally-created exploitation rights; it's only the market value of such IP that is allegedly affected. I reckon we need a new word. "Pirating" has sort-of taken that space but it's not really good and it only covers distribution. It should be something that carries a meaning of "swindled", "wiped away", "theoretic-market-value-corrupted".
- whiddershins 5y agoIf value is transferred by force, this is theft.
- bottled_poe 5y agoIntellectual property is not physical. Think about it.
- fnord77 5y agoyou wouldn't download a car, would you? me? if I could...
- superjan 5y agoIf you mean that it annoys you that any kind of copyright/IP violation is described as ‘stealing’ then I share your sentiment. This is a real crime though, and most people call this stealing.
- sanxiyn 5y ago> "Anytime source code gets leaked it's not good," said Ekram Ahmed, a spokesperson for the cybersecurity firm Check Point. "Hackers can comb through the code, identify deeper flaws for exploit, and sell that previous code on the dark web to malicious threat actors." This seems like a strong argument against using open source codes. Should I take this argument seriously and avoid them?
- mercora 5y agowhile i think this statement is flawed anyways, there is a difference in being the only one who can find these flaws easily or being part of a community were everybody could do this if qualified.
- dncornholio 5y agoYes and no. I would say it's less likely there's exploitable code in open source because it's so open.
- dijit 5y agoNo, he's being a bit stupid, security through obscurity is arguably no security at all however it makes identifying vulnerabilities _easier_. The main issue for leaking source code of _games_, especially _multiplayer games_, is that people learn how to bypass the anti-cheat mechanisms which leads to a degraded online experience for everybody. I worked on Tom Clancy's The Division and the mantra was always "write code like it will be public one day". (in their case it meant don't get to persnickety about a library not working how you wanted or swearing about how Windows was batshit insane at times -- but it also applied to making sure you did't just assume the code wouldn't be read by malicious people)
- ReptileMan 5y agoThere is much simpler solution about cheaters. Local servers to play on lan. Many games came with them.
- scambier 5y ago
- 101_101 5y agoNoice. EA can got fuck themself.
- aseerdbnarng 5y agoIs their plan to they sell it back to them in micro transactions?
- dalmo3 5y agoThe Stolen Bits DLC, available soon.
- toyg 5y agoYou will get the database table definition with the first release, and the actual records in a later DLC
- ysavir 5y agoUsing loot boxes, of course.
- zelphirkalt 5y agoOne loot box per otherwise expected built-in feature, of course.
- bobowzki 5y agoMaybe sell as an NFT? /s
- dreen 5y agoTheir plan is probably to sell better cheating software for online games.
- mbirth 5y agoAnd next year they sell it again with the code indented with spaces instead of tabs.
- goatse_aas 5y agoExcellent.
- dschuetz 5y agothis is a dupe
- mullikine 5y agoI don't think stealing is OK but I hope they managed to liberate C&C Generals 2 while they were in there
- IntelMiner 5y agoFind the long lost Red Alert 2 source code!
- toxik 5y agohttps://github.com/OpenRA/ra2 https://github.com/OpenRA/ra2 is good enough
- Jenk 5y agoYou've just inadvertently reminded me of that and now I'm probably going to be grumpy for the rest of my day.
- miav 5y agoThere have been multiple attacks like this and it seems the stolen code is usually made public in the end. I presume people will look at it and reuse some concepts and I wonder if this could lead to the technical state of the industry becoming better as a whole.
- eh9 5y agoWhen you consider how prone to patents the gaming industry can be, (and the fact that this is EA), I would be very careful before reusing concepts from here.
- barbecue_sauce 5y agoI don't think EA has any tech that's sufficiently advanced over something like Unreal Engine, which is already source available. It's at least not perceptible in the games they publish.
- permo-w 5y agoMaybe I’m being naïve, but that seems naïve. EA is a very well-funded and complex company with a lot of fingers in a lot of gaming pies. To assume that none of their code is cutting edge or advanced seems unlikely I could be entirely wrong though
- m12k 5y agoIn general the problem in the game industry isn't that people don't know better ways to structure their code, but that they are under extreme pressure to ship and get absolutely no time to refactor. Between GDC presentations and published computer graphics papers, the game industry is actually quite open about sharing its best ideas.
- barbecue_sauce 5y agoOr SIGGRAPH for that matter.
- lanevorockz 5y agoI am an adept of the free code as we should own the source code of the products we buy. It might be too early for society to adopt something this radical but I believe Stallman was right. Mainly that's why I stick to open source technology only.
- nix23 5y agoAnd extend it to Hardware, Cars and so on.
- wopwops 5y agoMaybe a community-made Titanfall 3 will finally happen!
- amelius 5y ago"Good artists copy, great artists steal."
- jokoon 5y agohttps://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/ Picasso never said that, even if it the quality of the quote is debatable.
- yawaworht1978 5y agoSo part of their code is now kinda open source /s
- DonHopkins 5y agoIt reminds me of when unsuspecting thieves accidentally stole a container of Iridium-192 used for industrial radiography from a lab in Mexico, and were eventually arrested and taken to the hospital to be treated for radiation burns. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32332271 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32332271 The FBI should keep an eye on hospitals for anyone showing up with burning bleeding eyes and a swelling itching brains and melting faces, from looking at EA's source code! ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1bNh-9Nj7U&ab_channel=HRVizionHRVizion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1bNh-9Nj7U&ab_channel=HRViz...
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoThe FBI should keep an eye on hospitals for anyone showing up with burning bleeding eyes and a swelling itching brain, from looking at EA's source code! ;) Other symptoms include a tendency to participate in death marches, work from 9am to 10pm, abandon spouses and consider every day a crunch. https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html
- rvba 5y agoHow is this connected to stealing source code of a computer game?
- barbecue_sauce 5y agoBecause EA makes bad games.
- DonHopkins 5y agoI'm under NDA so I can't tell you. ;) Just be thankful that The Sims doesn't have a "View Source" menu. Here's an example of some highly toxic code they wasn't intended to escape the lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY&t=7m15s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC52jE60KjY&t=7m15s
- permo-w 5y agoIt’s a joke. EA = bad. Reminds me on the kind of comments that are ubiquitous on reddit, which is one of the main reasons I left there. It’s witty and not dull, but does it bring any value to the discussion? I’d say not really
- xyst 5y agoReminds me of the time when Valve source code was exfiltrated.
- jokoon 5y agoNot really sure what this changes for the games released. I would say very little, in a way bad advertising is advertising which is good advertising. It might reveal some part of the scenario or features, and put pressure on the teams, but other than that, who really cares? Fans will talk about it, and that's only what this is. Maybe competitors might get an insight on what games are planning to be, but I doubt that there is much innovation, so meh? And it's not like those engines have tremendous engineering secrets either ways. I mean GPU are documented, and special shader effects are not that so hard to come by, what is difficult is getting developers who are able to understand how GPU work and to take advantage of those ever changing GPUs and APIs. I really don't think the game is going to be available in a pirated copy, seen that building such AAA games is pretty difficult for developers who are not part of their teams, not to mention all the copy protection mechanisms.
- madflame991 5y agoWas thinking the same - companies are extremely protective of their source code. How many games out there truly have unique/interesting/hard tech in them? I can think of Spore; I can think of a handful of rendering engines, maybe Stalker, Wow of course but not many more than that
- jhanschoo 5y agoBattlefield's multiplayer code should qualify.
- jokoon 5y agoNetcode technology is not a big subject worthy of secret. Sure it's complex, but it's very use-case specific. Developers will often talk and share how they solve problems, so...
- jokoon 5y agoIn tech, only ideas gets stolen. There are very few things that are really worth of being secret in software. For games, hard work is just this: content (which has IP on it), debugging (which is specific to a certain game), handling GPUs (requires engineers, work is obsolete in 3 or 5 years), a few gameplay mechanics (cannot be patented). Patents only matter when data is about some expensive, long term research that requires physical testing and labs, like a new molecule for a medicine, or some method or building a material. Even when HL2 source code was stolen, it did not really matter.
- tonyedgecombe 5y agoMy son interviewed at a gaming company that put two machines on everybody's desk. One connected to the internet for web/email and the other on a separate air-gaped network for development. I wonder if this will become the norm.
- acomjean 5y agoThats how it was in the defense business. Our radar software was not on the internet. It makes things a little harder because reference aren’t available easily, and people didn’t read they’re email as frequently, but it was ok.
- bsenftner 5y agoAs a survivor of the worst of The EA Spouse Era's abuse, karma's a bitch.
- zelphirkalt 5y agoPerhaps they can now fix EA's broken games and give the players bang for their bucks.
- chrisco255 5y agoSo they basically stole a bunch of technical debt? Does EA owe capital gains tax now?
- m12k 5y agoHey, it's only debt if there's someone around that needs to pay it down. Once the skeleton crew that was left to crank out DLC's moves on to pastures greener after half a year, nobody's ever touching that shit again.
- sys_64738 5y agoThey're claiming no 'user' data was breached. Is this just PR for "we have no clue if all your info (name, bank info, SSN, date of birth, etc) was stolen" or is it "We confidently know because we audited that data access and verified the audit logs were not breached so we know your data is safe."