Half-Life 2 Source Code Leaked, Seriously

Bond · 10-05-2003, 03:50 PM

This is from a Half-Life 2 employee:

Quote:

Ever have one of those weeks? This has just not been the best couple of days for me or for Valve.

Yes, the source code that has been posted is the HL-2 source code.

Here is what we know:

1) Starting around 9/11 of this year, someone other than me was accessing my email account. This has been determined by looking at traffic on our email server versus my travel schedule.

2) Shortly afterwards my machine started acting weird (right-clicking on executables would crash explorer). I was unable to find a virus or trojan on my machine, I reformatted my hard drive, and reinstalled.

3) For the next week, there appears to have been suspicious activity on my webmail account.

4) Around 9/19 someone made a copy of the HL-2 source tree.

5) 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).

6) Periodically for the last year we've been the subject of a variety of denial of service attacks targetted at our webservers and at Steam. We don't know if these are related or independent.

Well, this sucks.

What I'd appreciate 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.

Gabe

Sucks to be Gabe.

Jonbo298 · 10-05-2003, 03:55 PM

Outlook seems to be part of the problem also. *gasp* I never would've thought Microsoft would be involved (somewhat).

But I've read about this somewhere. Sucks, but thankfully they have backups.

Happydude · 10-05-2003, 04:47 PM

whats a source code/tree again?

i forgot

GiMpY-wAnNaBe · 10-05-2003, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by happydude666

whats a source code/tree again?

i forgot

source code = C/C++/C# code (assuming thats what thier writing it in)
now, what this means is that depending on how much code was stolen, if this code is given widely over the internet, games can be written with use of the Halflife 2 engine with no royalties going to Valve software(i believe they wrote the engine for the game), either that or all the skins can be changed, given a different title, and be sold off by anyone.....so basically windows f*cked them over

Null · 10-05-2003, 06:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GiMpY-wAnNaBe

source code = C/C++/C# code (assuming thats what thier writing it in)
now, what this means is that depending on how much code was stolen, if this code is given widely over the internet, games can be written with use of the Halflife 2 engine with no royalties going to Valve software(i believe they wrote the engine for the game), either that or all the skins can be changed, given a different title, and be sold off by anyone.....so basically windows f*cked them over

yes it was C++ from what i've heard. And no, no one would use the code and sell a game off it. Its too risky. yes they could but highly doubful anyone would.
and from what i heard it wasnt 'all' and it was only code so no skins models maps. etc. no one could compile the code or anything.
Alittle more worrysome is the off chance that someone can understand it (VERY FEW who would have the code would truely understand it) and write some hacks / cheats / things of that nature for use when the game comes out.

This will most likely delay the game till 2004 as Valve will most likely rework some of the code to change some things. Its a setback, and its a shame it happened. But it has happened with other games in the past. i believe the Quake1 source code got leaked. People turn it into too big of a deal, its not THAT big.

Jason1 · 10-05-2003, 10:13 PM

I read about this. I cant believe a game of such high-caliber would let their source code get leaked. I really hope its not delayed til 2004, I was looking foward to some HL2 action on Christmas morning.

Yoda9864 · 10-06-2003, 01:02 AM

Well, it's not like they "let" it get leaked Jason. But yes, you'd think they would put a little more security around it.

I say that this is just a big excuse (generated by Valve) to delay the game.

Mushlafa · 10-09-2003, 10:39 PM

Well, I forgot to update you with the freshest stuff from
Valvesoftware.

Detonator-52.13-ANON got leaked today, its the new NVidia
drivers for HL2, though i have no fancy video card to test the
driver on.

Btw., for those of you still thinking -ANON is a group, i have
to say it isnt. Its just Anonymous.

To all those saying HL2 was delayed because of the hacking
action, ill just remind you that what was leaked is what Valve
has, nothing more and nothing less, so its pretty good to
understand it wasnt finished yet.

Also I'd like to point out the E3 was one big fake by Valve.
Ever tried to kill that soldier in physicstown ? Notice the
door will still get kicked ? No scripted sequences ?

To everyone saying this is no Beta: I'd like to point out that
THIS is what you wanted Valve to release on 9/30/03, theres no
such thing as a much better release in Valves network!

To Valve: I suggest you stop lying to your customers about how
much was stolen/compromised, or I'll have to release everything
just to prove my point. And you know what you got, as I do.

- Anonymous leaker

That was posted today in an IRC channel....

Null · 10-09-2003, 11:29 PM

theres been other stuff posted about the hacker took it to prove valve lied and never intended on releasing it on Sept 30th and thats why it was stolen.

Some rumors include the Whole game has been leaked now.

The other more official sounding one, is that the game may be delayed untill April 2004 now.

Dyne · 10-10-2003, 01:45 AM

Yeah, I'd believe it's a fake. It's good publicity to release shots and video at E3, blow everyone's heads off... they gave it all awards, and it wasn't even material. Jeez. And with the prospect of Halo 2 being best of show.. well, owned.

Yoda9864 · 10-10-2003, 11:29 AM

Yeah, I've heard that "playable builds" of the game got leaked from the stolen code. I've even talked to someone who "has one of the playble builds" of the game. I didn't believe him for a sec that he had one.

But I thought it was official that it is delayed til April. I mean, that's totally fine by me because by april, the prices of ATI radeons will have gone down. There's no way I'm playing this game on an Nvidia card

. Especially not my Ti4200, but not even on a good fx card. ATI's cards just blow them out of the water now.

Ace195 · 10-10-2003, 01:49 PM

Hmm.. I wouln't mind a playable build. But ofcourse I still want the real game. But I have to update my computer just a little bit to play it

Like a new vid card. But you would think that a place like Valve would have hardware firewalls that are nearly inpenetrable

Null · 10-10-2003, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoda9864

Yeah, I've heard that "playable builds" of the game got leaked from the stolen code. I've even talked to someone who "has one of the playble builds" of the game. I didn't believe him for a sec that he had one.

But I thought it was official that it is delayed til April. I mean, that's totally fine by me because by april, the prices of ATI radeons will have gone down. There's no way I'm playing this game on an Nvidia card

. Especially not my Ti4200, but not even on a good fx card. ATI's cards just blow them out of the water now.

not sure if it was offical, might have been. havnt been keeping up on it
And in all honesty bro. it matters not which one of the newer GFX card brands one gets. ATI's are more powerful right now. but the differnece is when both are already in the 100 FPS range. you can notice nothing if either is higher above like 60 or something. Lot depends on the drivers too. each company keeps making new drivers to make it run better on certain games.

All boils down to personal preference. i might grab the ATI GFX card when they package HL2 in with it for a nice price =)

Jonbo298 · 10-11-2003, 07:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ace195

But you would think that a place like Valve would have hardware firewalls that are nearly inpenetrable

The reason the source got leaked was because of Microsoft and their hundreds of thousands of security holes in Outlook (Express). The hacker(s) exploited it easily because MS doesn't understand the meaning of security.

But part of the blame can be put on a Valve employee for opening the thing that allowed the hacker(s) access to Valve's network. So any firewall Valve has wouldn't stop the hackers because they would be able to grant themselves full access to Valve's network by telling the firewall they have that kind of access.

Ace195 · 10-11-2003, 12:28 PM

Jon if you worked anywhere close to microsoft you would know it's much more secure than anything eudora or even netscape provide just because of your seething hate for microsoft I'm going to go over to your house and format your harddrive to get the evil "microsoft" on there and put linux BSD on there and watch you whine like a baby because you don't under stand how to setup a firewall on it and you keep getting hacked :P

[edit]
Oh and another thing jon. The e-mail software runs on port 25 and 110 you would have to wait for the program to be open for those ports to be open. | |) | 0 7