Confirmed: Half-Life 2 source code leaked

[vovan]

Yup, you get a 37 MB porn movie, rar it up, name it "OMG HL2 SRC.rar", and voila, you'll get yourself an instant boost in status points on Kazaa.

[DrSpike]

Ah, so that's why Vovansim@Kazaa has a participation level of 999.

[MattH]

Originally posted by vovansim
Yup, you get a 37 MB porn movie, rar it up, name it "OMG HL2 SRC.rar", and voila, you'll get yourself an instant boost in status points on Kazaa.

So that was you!

[vovan]

How witty everyone is today!

It's just that romours are going 'round that someone has actually compiled the sources and added some models so that the game has actually become playable, and the executable is available for download. According to a statment, however:

- 2 fake builds of the beta on both IRC and Usenet, one of which is 1.4gigs of gay porn.

That's why I thought that maybe the "source" archives going around may also be some kind of porn in disguise.

[Solver]

The 1.3 GB "HL 2 beta" has to be a fake, because as Valve says, no textures or models were stolen.

But yes, the source was indeed complied, into a "playable" version in which you get a "map" consisting of a small room with 2 textures. Those textures as well as the pistol are rendered at run-time from code, for engine testing purposes, apparently, which is why the thing shows. No resource files have been stolen.

[Asher]

- 2 fake builds of the beta on both IRC and Usenet, one of which is 1.4gigs of gay porn.

It's a win-win situation!

[geeslaka]

Only if it's good porn and you're gay.
But since I don't play FPS's, I don't have to worry about it.

[Solver]

So, Asher, is it beneficial to be gay if you're downloading illegal files ?

[Skanky Burns]

Well duh!

Even Boris (iirc) was making jokes about releasing his collection under the guise of religious names.

[Kassiopeia]

How can a hacker steal code from a devolper? This makes no sense to me. I could see the hacker copying the source code, but how can you steal it?

The cracker used an exploit in Microsoft Outlook (so I remember) and installed whatever he needed on the main developer's machine.

Quoting Valve:

"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."

A definite booboo having something important stashed on an email machine. For more info and a rundown of things you can check out http://gtwy.hl2arena.com/

Now there's a _very_ sticky rumour that there's an alpha compiled out of the source and resource files which were apparently stolen along. I've seen a lot of new screenshots and video lately, my source of links just died though since the chanops of #halflife2 at quakenet +m'ed the channel. Can't blame them though.

[vovan]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
The cracker used an exploit in Microsoft Outlook (so I remember) and installed whatever he needed on the main developer's machine.

I suppose the question of "how could a hacker steal code" did not exactly mean how the crime was accomplished, but rather what does it even mean, to steal a piece of intellectual property, like the source code. After all, in the conventional meaning of the word, if you steal something from someone, that person doesn't have that any more. In that sense, you can't really "steal" code, you can only copy it. (Well, I guess if you copied it first, and then deleted the original file...) But, of course, in this case, by steal we mean more like "obtained posession of the code illegally".

To get away from the intricacies of the language... I've read an article on Gamespot, that says that the source code that was stolen also contained pieces of software licensed to VALVe by other companies, like the physics engine, as well as the Steam sources. Anyone know of any of that / seen any other sources (no pun intended here ) of this info?

[Skanky Burns]

The value of the source code is having a monopoly on it.
So in that sense, they have stolen from Valve.

[sabrewolf]

well, it looks like they're being blackmailed. the theives say they'll publish the whole code if valve does not admit the whole extent of the theft. until now they've only confirmed 1/3rd

has anyone seen/tried the build? it is being said that you can walk around and shoot but there are no real levels and missions, etc.