Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

eurogamer.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 99 posts

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#41

Post by ineedasername »

>"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.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#43

Post by StimDeck »

deaddodo wrote: post #32
shortrounddev2 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Not that I can speak for this specific story, as I have no firsthand testimony, but Mitnick is a notorious embellisher, downplayer and (anecdotally) liar.

*was

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#44

Post by Wowfunhappy »

bagels wrote: post #40
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #37

Valve'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.

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.

He 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.

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#45

Post by StimDeck »

nanidin wrote: post #34
prmoustache wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

Props, my friends just played through the demos for the most part. Quickly we learned the e3 demo was scripted when it was ostensibly the enemy so reacting to the environment

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#46

Post by baby »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #37

Valve'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.

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...

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#49

Post by baby »

dopeboy wrote: post #21
tetris11 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 3 should be "Don't email your hack victims with proof of your crimes for a face-to-face meeting."

He 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.

I'm guessing he got a better deal than if he had been caught

Re: The boy who stole Half-Life 2 (2011)

#50

Post by baby »

Nullabillity wrote: post #25
HenryBemis wrote: post #3

TL-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.

> 4) don't destroy other people's hard work, it's not nice. Destroy.. how? The game still exists, Valve still owns it.

I mean it fucked all of the devs morale and the situation of HL2 for months after that. I remember downloading the leak and playing around, it was a shit show.
Post reply on HN