Off-Topic, but interesting: Half Life 2 source code leak!

[LordArioch]

I agree...why couldn't this happen to some company I don't like...like Blizzard or anyone making games Microsoft distributes.
As I understand the physics engine that isn't theirs is in the code too...so that's going to hurt them.

Wow...at the half-life.net forums there have been at least 800,000 views throughout the day and 2000+ Posts. That's a lot of people.

[ October 04, 2003, 01:15: Message edited by: LordArioch ]

[Mortifer]

New comments from Gabe Newell:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/28641

1) We've taken our network connection down to pretty much a minimum. We're still finding machines internally that have been compromised.

2) The suite of tools that the attacker was using included the modified Version of RemotelyAnywhere (basically a Remote Desktop-style remote admin tool), Haxker Defender (a process, registry key and file hiding tool), the key logger, and various networking utilities that allowed them to transfer files (compressors, NetCat, and FTP). We also are pretty sure they were sniffing our network to gather passwords and other information. Haxker Defender includes a file system driver that allows an attacker to have stuff on your machine that is invisible, unless you do something like mount the drive under another OS that has NTFS support.

We have determined one way of detecting some infected machines, which is using a connection viewer to detect connections to anomalous hosts external to our network.

We still don't know their entry method.

3) In general, the community has been remarkably swift at tracking down the sources of the leak. What would be most helpful now are IP addresses of the people who were responsible for the intrusion or for the denial of service attacks.

4) Also, please continue to send in URLs of websites hosting the source code. We've been contacting people and asking them to take it down.

5) There's anecdotal evidence that other game developers have been targeted by whoever attacked us. This hasn't been confirmed. We've been providing other game developers with more detailed information about the exploits and evidence of infiltration.

6) We're running a little bit blind with our network shut down, but it seems like some of the press has picked up the story. I've been fielding calls from the mainstream non-games, non-technical press.all day. Hopefully they will get to report shortly what a mistake it is to piss off a whole bunch of gamers and get them hunting you around the Internet.

For any information related to this, please send it to [email protected], or you can always send to [email protected] as well.

[Psitticine]

Originally posted by Mortifer:
Hopefully they will get to report shortly what a mistake it is to piss off a whole bunch of gamers and get them hunting you around the Internet.

That's not a mistake I'd want to make.

[Mortifer]

Little update:

http://halflife2.homelan.com/forums/...threadid=11403

"One of Germany's biggest PC gaming magazines, Gamestar, are reporting that there is the potential for Half-Life 2 to be pushed back as far as April 2004 according to a statement by Christophe Ramboz on behalf of Vivendi Universal Games. While translations have been rather poor, from what has been gathered; this possible delay is due to Valve needing to work on multiplayer and Steam components..."

Propably Valve will have to rewrite (some) parts of source code...Oh boy, Valve sucked his own stupidity....

[DominionsFan]

You will crap your pants now..
Half Life 2 ALHPA is released..

http://66.201.243.169/release.php3?releaseid=84209

OMFG! This is so annoying...Piracy is taking over the world.

[ October 08, 2003, 07:59: Message edited by: DominionsFAN ]

[Mortifer]

Originally posted by DominionsFAN:
You will crap your pants now..
Half Life 2 ALHPA is released..

http://66.201.243.169/release.php3?releaseid=84209

OMFG! This is so annoying...Piracy is taking over the world.

UH! WOW! This means that Half Life 2 (Alpha) is out as warez?!?!?!?!??! The original game wont be out for at least a half year!

[LordArioch]

From what little I know of it the "alpha" isn't all that functional. I could be wrong I guess...but I think the source code leak probably was worse for valve. This might ruin some of their suspense but I can't see too many people trying to learn as much about HL2 as possible, deciding the suspense is ruined, and then not buying it.

It is rather annoying how piracy seems to be taking over...but I bet they mind this much less than having their source stolen.

[Mortifer]

I just checked out the ISOnews Boards...and the Users there are playing with this HL2 Alpha and all of them are amazed by the physics of the engine. This means that the ALPHA is playable...

[LordArioch]

I still think it hurts valve less than the source code leak...because there's a difference between the game running and it being full release Version half-life 2. Actually apparently the person who released the "Alpha" said that he didnt mean for the source code to be spread, which at least makes me less annoyed at him.

Yes, the physics engine is the one thing that tempted me...I'd like to download the source and look at how it works and download the alpha and watch it in action. But since both are highly illegal I think I'll wait and play Dominions or something else.

I also find it interesting that planethalflife says "UPDATE: Regrettably, there's a good possibility even more stolen content will leak later this week." How would they know it's a good chance? And also more stolen content would be getting close to the actual thing being out. What happened, Valve? It seems like the hacker was just taking gigabyte after gigabyte of data...

It'd actually be pretty funny if there was released a Version that was pretty much complete and didn't run through steam. Sad for valve...but amusing nonetheless.