Dude, Ox, Check this out.
Friday 3rd October 2003
VALVE SUFFERS HALF-LIFE 2 CODE LEAK
Pesky hackers lift Half-Life 2 source code from Valve Software HQ and then upload it to the Internet
15:21 The Internet today is awash with news reports concerning the leaking of Half-Life 2 source code. Hackers who have managed to break into Valve Software HQ have stolen the code and then distributed it to the Internet, which has lead, not surprisingly, to huge numbers of people downloading the pilfered goods.
Ramifications of this leak could be huge. The source code that has been nabbed is essentially the Half-Life 2 game engine, from what we understand, and those in possession of it with the know how to interpret the information could cause numerous headaches.
Valve Software's Gabe Newell, in a lengthy submission to the forums on Half-Life 2 fansite Halflife2.net, has given official comment on the leaking of the source code.
"Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve," Newell begins his post before confirming that "Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code."
Following the opening is a bit of Colombo-style detective work where Newell speculates on how hackers could have gained access to the code. E-mail system hacking seems to be the prime suspect.
"At some point, keystroke recorders got installed on several machines at Valve. Our speculation is that these were done via a buffer overflow in Outlook's preview pane.
"This recorder is apparently a customized version of RemoteAnywhere created to infect Valve (at least it hasn't been seen anywhere else, and isn't detected by normal virus scanning tools)," he says, before summing it all up by saying that: "Well, this sucks."
"What I'd appreciate," he continues, "is the assistance of the community in tracking this down. I have a special email address for people to send information to,
helpvalve@valvesoftware.com.
"If you have information about the denial of service attacks or the infiltration of our network, please send the details. There are some pretty obvious places to start with the posts and records in IRC, so if you can point us in the right direction, that would be great.
"We at Valve have always thought of ourselves as being part of a community, and I can't imagine a better group of people to help us take care of these problems than this community."
While we hope against hope that it won't be the case, the leak could also mean that Half-Life 2 will suffer further delay; but we've heard nothing to this effect from Valve Software as yet. Let's just keep fingers crossed that we never will.
Stuart Bishop