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The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)
- no_wizard 3y agoArticle 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.
- giobox 3y agoI 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!
- pdntspa 3y agoThat used to be a running joke within the original hacker (NOT startup-hacker) community
- JohnFen 3y agoWhen I was in high school, in the Before Times[1], a guy who ran in my hacker circles broke into the school system's mainframe and gave everyone he liked straight A's. He was, of course, caught -- but the school system really did hire him after he graduated, as their IT security guy. [1] This was before the internet, before there were laws specifically about this sort of thing, and before the public started mistakenly equating "hacker" with "criminal".
- more_corn 3y agoI got caught defeating computer protections in high school. They gave me a job. It helps that I used my elevated access to fix the printer so I could print without moving to another computer. Gaining illicit access to systems lost the appeal when I realized they’d just grant the access if they trusted you not to screw it up. That was the end of my hacking and beginning of my career.
- arwineap 3y agoI broke into some systems at my high school, and got hired jr/sr year at my school district. Their issue was a permission misconfiguration in AD, and allowed me to do all sorts of things like adjust the backgrounds for all the computers in the district I thought it'd be an interesting entry into tech jobs, specifically around microsoft AD, which was something I never got to really play with enough at home (licensing, and hardware limitations) They ended up just using me to re-image and setup machines :(
- mavamaarten 3y agoI also broke into the systems in college, but I was so anxious/scared about the whole ordeal I didn't dare to disclose the vulnerabilities I found. I figured it could go both ways: either my career as IT student was over, or they would thank/praise me for it. I figured it wasn't worth the risk.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago> Also sets a horrible precedent that you can hold the company ransom over stolen code to get a job if nothing else! 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.
- HenryBemis 3y agoTL-DR: 1) don't hack. 2) if you hack, don't get caught. 3) if you hack and get caught, be in a country that you can bribe yourself out of the mess (definitely not Germany!) 4) don't destroy other people's hard work, it's not nice.
- tetris11 3y agoI think 3 should be "Don't email your hack victims with proof of your crimes for a face-to-face meeting."
- RandomGuy456 3y agoThat one is fundamental! lol
- Arrath 3y agoRule 0: Commit 1 crime at a time.
- doubled112 3y ago"Only break one law at a time" is exactly this said another way, yet somehow easier for me to parse.
- Arrath 3y agoFair, but it loses out on the rhyme.
- dopeboy 3y agoHe did so to confess. He has admitted he didn’t want to hide. There’s no strategy to critique here; he wanted to come clean.
- baby 3y agoI'm guessing he got a better deal than if he had been caught
- tetris11 3y agoThat boy is now 40
- serf 3y agothe 'boy' was also 21 when the thing happened, one could say the titling was never really appropriate.
- shortrounddev2 3y agoidk, anybody under the age of 22 is basically a child to me
- setr 3y agoReally a child is anyone under my current_age / 2 + 7
- bykhun 3y agothat's dog years
- codetrotter 3y agoReally anyone under my current_age / 2 + 7 is a dog
- baby 3y agoOh wow, that completely shifts my perspective. That title definitely has an agenda.
- t0bia_s 3y agoI guess in Germany policie officers wouldn't get permission to raid house for arresting underage boy.
- maxweylandt 3y agoThe 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
- sva_ 3y agoPretty sure the leak also lead them to release the Source engine's code, which was wildly successful.
- charcircuit 3y agoValve has not released the source engine code beyond their partners.
- russelg 3y agoIt's literally on Github. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013 https://github.com/ValveSoftware/source-sdk-2013
- whoknowsidont 3y agoThis is the SDK and some parts of the engine that make the SDK easier to use and grok. It is not the engine. You cannot compile that and get a fully working engine. It's a bit like claiming the Win32 API is the Windows NT kernel.
- mepian 3y agoIt's literally SDK, if you care to actually read your link. Not the engine itself: the game-specific logic DLLs (client.dll and server.dll in the game's folder) that hook into the engine, and can be modified to make mods. Valve started publishing those with the release of their first game in 1998. You can read more about the modding workflow here: https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/My_First_Mod https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/My_First_Mod If you are familiar with the latest version of Unreal, then it's like having access to the "Games" project in your solution and only some headers from the "Engine" project.
- SoKamil 3y agoHow f-ed would he be if he flew to the US?
- throwbadubadu 3y agoYeah, 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?"
- t0bia_s 3y agoThis response sounds more like fabulation for a film script.
- eloisant 3y agoThat'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: Short version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Underground Long version: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/45/ https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/45/ In short they got sentenced to 18 to 24 months of prison.
- ericzawo 3y agoA couple of these guys went to my high school! Seemed really overtly harsh.
- jamiek88 3y ago> This culminated in the perpetrators carrying out a physical theft, by using stolen credentials to enter "a secure building" at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters and exiting with publicly unreleased prototypes of the Xbox One codenamed "Durango". Group members say they were driven by a strong curiosity about Microsoft's then-unreleased Xbox One console and associated software. I don’t know, this seems a lot more than ‘hacking’. 18 to 24 months seems about right for that IMO. Typically I am horrified at US sentencing but this doesn’t seem terrible.
- neonate 3y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20220412005212/https://www.eurogamer.net/the-boy-who-stole-half-life-2-article https://web.archive.org/web/20220412005212/https://www.eurog... https://archive.ph/z6qbR https://archive.ph/z6qbR
- dang 3y agoRelated: The boy who stole Half Life 2 source code (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7830881 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 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2245786 - Feb 2011 (125 comments)
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoThis same article later appeared in Ars Technica as Catching up with the guy who stole Half-Life 2’s source code, 10 years later (2016) https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/what-drove-one-half-life-2-super-fan-to-hack-into-valves-servers/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/06/what-drove-one-half-l...
- bakugo 3y agoI wish more people would hack and steal code from big video game studios. It's thanks to kids like him that Source Engine games are so well-understood and easily moddable nowadays.
- jamesfinlayson 3y agoI think it happens more often than you'd think - this was the first of maybe four leaks of the full Source engine code (so far). Generally it doesn't make headlines though because it's just code, not an unreleased game.
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoValve's response here seems exceedingly harsh. 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 3y ago[deleted]
- bagels 3y agoI 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.
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoHe didn't intentionally publish the hl2 source. > 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.
- dvzk 3y agoYes. 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.
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoOkay, well that wasn't in the article, I wasn't aware. I still find Valve's response to a person admitting guilt to be pretty harsh, given that they couldn't have known about unrelated crimes.
- ineedasername 3y ago>"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.
- bozhark 3y agoAaron S.
- KMnO4 3y agoIt’s crazy. How is it any different than the CCP luring Americans over to China and throwing them in prison for posting distasteful content online? The CCP and the FBI have different values, but it’s entirely the same concept.
- jmprspret 3y agoOf 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.
- pipes 3y agoThere'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.
- ineedasername 3y agoYes, I’m the GP commenter and I was hesitant to present things in such stark terms but the format of an internet forum isn’t fit for highly nuanced and extended single-party discourse unless it takes place in multiple exchanges, a bit like this, of which HN is still a place they might be found. The treatment this individual would have suffered and the mal-incentivized justice system in the US where high profile cases and large $ amounts make great news headlines and careers for junior-level agents splashing across the ticket taper screens of 24-hour news networks and social media feeds is awful. But the social agenda as spoon fed top down isn’t deliberately aimed at the outcome this kid would have faced in the US. That outcome would have been kafkaesque but still just a product of shitty incentives at various socio-cultural levels. That would have made him an outlier, one of a few dozens of individuals abused in this way. Horrific, yes, and to be held up against progressive values of freedom as absolute failures of our systems to function properly. Exemplars of how our ostensible values sometimes— and maybe often— fail to be realized in action and fact. And even how there are still lurking undercurrents of more systemic problems that must be uprooted and dealt with. But these failures are a whisper compared to the deliberate and overt and systematic, unflinching and unabashed abuses that occur elsewhere. Uyghurs in China are an obvious but too often ignored example. All too often a false equivalency is made between the two ends of the spectrum, not to mention the gradations in between. In many ways it’s a paradox of freedom that we in the west are only able to be vocal about the outlier hypocrisies of our countries because we have the freedom to do so with significantly less fear of life-changing consequences. It is… I don’t know, ironic? Tragic? Certainly inconvenient… but the exact freedoms we have in more progressive countries allow us to amplify our outlier failings on these issues to the point that more oppressive nations can use that as rhetorical ammunition and propagandistic cover for their own more deliberate and massively scaled efforts in further deliberate extremes of such efforts.
- KyleSanderson 3y agoEverytime this pops up, it always reminds me about the cafe program which just had MAC authentication. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/valve-hacker-arrested https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/valve-hacker-arrested
- jamesfinlayson 3y agoI didn't see anything about the MAC authentication but I do remember MaddoxX at the time and all he was doing. I think the forum he was posting on ended up purging all his posts after he was arrested.
- rowanG077 3y agoIt's honestly insane how a company can just claim this cost us X without a shred of evidence. I very much even doubt this cost Valve a single dollar. In fact it would not even surprise me that this helped sell Half-Life 2. The game that some people where willing to risk years of jail time to get it a month earlier. Can't get better marketing then that honestly.
- Nasrudith 3y agoExpense depends upon the amount of auditing done in response and auditing time can get very expensive fast if you go deep enough. Especially when you go combinatorial with interactions. There also isn't a neat threshold of when it starts to become "overkill". If it was for knocking a hole in a non-structural wall they can safely call it overkill somewhere between "replacing the entire wall" and "replacing the entire building".
- sam0x17 3y agoI love that each heading in the article is a half life 2 level name. Made my day.
- Lammy 3y agoTCRF page for the stolen build: https://tcrf.net/Proto:Half-Life_2_(Windows)/September_26th_2003_Build https://tcrf.net/Proto:Half-Life_2_(Windows)/September_26th_...
- fransje26 3y agoAh, Schönau im Schwarzwald. The birthplace of Joachim Löw. Also the birthplace of the infamous Albert Schlageter. Which kind of explains the fairly well maintained nazi monument overlooking the village..