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October 3, 2003
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Half-Life 2 Source Leak Statement
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
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Attack program hijacks surfing in IE
A malicious program, dubbed QHosts, infects PCs using a recent flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer to take control of how computers look up Internet addresses, antivirus firms warned on Thursday.
The program takes advantage of a critical flaw in the popular Internet Explorer Web browser, which Microsoft has made an integral part of its Windows operating system. The flaw, which Microsoft has labeled an "object type" vulnerability, can be used to cause Web site visitors to unknowingly run malicious code onto their computers when surfing a compromised site. Such an attack is referred to as a Trojan horse.
The Trojan horse used a banner ad that the attacker somehow placed on Web hosting provider FortuneCity.com's site to infect PCs running Windows, said Craig Schmugar, a virus research engineer with security company Network Associates. When a page containing the booby-trapped ad is displayed in Internet Explorer, the malicious code will automatically install the Trojan horse on the user's PC.
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Hackers to Face Tougher Sentences
Convicted hackers and virus writers soon will face significantly harsher penalties under new guidelines that dictate how the government punishes computer crimes.
Starting in November, federal judges will begin handing out the expanded penalties, which were developed by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Congress ordered the changes last year, saying that sentences for convicted computer criminals should reflect the seriousness of their crimes.
"The increases in penalties are a reflection of the fact that these offenses are not just fun and games, that there are real world consequences for potentially devastating computer hacking and virus cases," said John G. Malcolm, deputy assistant attorney general and head of the U.S. Justice Department's computer crimes section. "Thus far, the penalties have not been commensurate with the harm that these hacking cases have caused to real victims."
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Coleman Seeks Lower Downloading Penalties
Sen. Norm Coleman said Thursday he will push legislation this year to reduce legal penalties for people who download copyrighted music off the Internet.
Coleman, R-Minn., said current penalties, which range from $750 to $150,000 per downloaded song, are excessive and enough to scare innocent people into settling lawsuits filed by the recording industry.
"I can tell you that $150,000 per song is not reasonable, and that's technically what you can put in front of somebody," Coleman said in a conference call with reporters. "That forces people to settle when they may want to fight, but they're thinking, 'goodness, gracious, what am I going to face?' "
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ICANN Gives VeriSign an Ultimatum
In addition, our review of the .com and .net registry agreements between ICANN and VeriSign leads us to the conclusion that VeriSign’s unilateral and unannounced changes to the operation of the .com and .net Top Level Domains are not consistent with material provisions of both agreements. These inconsistencies include violation of the Code of Conduct and equal access provisions, failure to comply with the obligation to act as a neutral registry service provider, failure to comply with the Registry Registrar Protocol, failure to comply with domain registration provisions, and provision of an unauthorized Registry Service. These inconsistencies with VeriSign's obligations under the .com and .net registry agreements are additional reasons why the changes in question must be suspended pending further evaluation and discussion between ICANN and VeriSign.
Given these conclusions, please consider this a formal demand to return the operation of the .com and .net domains to their state before the 15 September changes, pending further technical, operational and legal evaluation. A failure to comply with this demand will require ICANN to take the steps necessary under those agreements to compel compliance with them.
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Intel Canterwood-ES Receives Official Name, Prescott Support
Sources disclosed Intel's plans to finally unveil its code-named Canterwood-ES chipset for entry-level servers in late fourth quarter this year under Intel E7210 official brand-name. The part will support 800MHz Quad Pumped Bus and Prescott processors. The E7210 will be Intel's major platform for 1U/Rack servers until it is substituted by the code-named Copper River core-logic in Q3 2004.
We originally mentioned Intel's Canterwood-ES chipset in March this year and even brought you the clear specifications of the part. Nothing changed from that time – the MCH will still support processors with 533, 800MHz QPB, dual-channel PC2700 or PC3200 memory with ECC support, CSA bus for Kenai-II Gigabit Ethernet controller as well as PAT, the main feature of the i875P and E7210 core-logic designs.
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VeriSign Now Faces Class Action Suit Over Redirection
The furor over VeriSign Inc.'s redirect service for mistyped or unregistered Web domains isn't about to die down as the body overseeing Web addressing begins taking public comments on the issue and a third lawsuit attacks the service.
A committee of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) this week began taking public comments about the effect of VeriSign's SiteFinder service on the Internet in preparation for a public meeting in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. The Security and Stability Advisory Committee, which last week issued an advisory blaming the service for weakening the Internet's stability, plans to issue another report to guide ICANN about SiteFinder after examining issues that will be raised at the meeting, ICANN announced.
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RBOCs stand tall against recording industry
I usually don't say nice things about telcos. And I almost never say nice things about their lawyers. But here I'll do both: Kudos to the lawyers at Verizon and SBC for opposing the Recording Industry Association of America's request that the telcos compromise the privacy of their customers. Way to go, guys.
Here's the deal: the RIAA has asked the regional Bell operating companies, including Verizon and SBC, to monitor customers' usage of their DSL services and report downloads of copyrighted material. To their everlasting credit, the telcos have refused to comply and are fighting the RIAA in federal court.
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And that's how the cookie crumbles
When cookie-lovers open packages of their favorite snacks, some of the biscuits are often in bits.
Now scientists say they know why -- and it has little to do with the way cookies are packaged and transported.
Instead, laser tests carried out by British physicists found that cookies -- or biscuits, as they are known in Britain -- often develop "fault lines" a few hours after baking.
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Closest asteroid yet flies past Earth
An asteroid about the size of a small house passed just 88,000 kilometres from the Earth by on Saturday 27 September - the closest approach of a natural object ever recorded. Geostationary communication satellites circle the Earth 42,000km from the planet's centre.
The asteroid, designated 2003 SQ222, came from inside the Earth's orbit and so was only spotted after it had whizzed by. The first sighting was on Sunday 28 by the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search program in Arizona, US.
Amateur astronomer Peter Birtwhistle of Great Shefford, Berkshire, UK, then photographed it on Monday 29. This provided data that helped Brian Marsden, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, to calculate its orbit.
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Senate aide fired for offensive Web site
Missouri Republican Sen. Kit Bond on Thursday fired his communications director for running a political Web site named for the tail number of a plane that crashed in 2000, killing the state's Democratic governor.
"The actions of a member of my staff in using official computers to make hurtful personal attacks on public servants were totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated," Bond said in a statement issued Thursday.
The staff member was Ernie Blazar, Bond's communications director the past three years. Bond aide Jason Van Eaton confirmed Thursday that Blazar had been fired.
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FCC Begins To Receive Complaints About Calls
Government regulators began processing complaints about unwanted telemarketing calls yesterday, though their authority to enforce the ban remained in legal limbo.
The Federal Communications Commission said it received 250 complaints in the first eight hours in which consumers could submit them. FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell said the agency's "number one enforcement priority right now" is to go after telemarketing companies that are calling phone numbers that have been placed on the do-not-call registry.
Powell has vowed to enforce the registry even though a federal judge has ruled that it is unconstitutional and that the FCC can't obtain access to it. That makes it hard for the agency to know which 50 million phone numbers -- about a third of all U.S. residential phone lines -- are on it.
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Napster ready for test launch
Pioneering song-swapping internet service Napster is to make a legal return to business, two years after it was shut down.
The service will run a test launch on 9 October and should be fully operational by November, ahead of schedule.
The original website boasted 60 million users but was forced to close when record companies began legal action for copyright infringements.
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Mplayer revisited
It's been almost two years since I wrote about Mplayer, an open source movie player for Linux and other platforms. Rereading that story today, I see I was wrong when I predicted that Mplayer's popularity wouldn't last. It continues to rank as the most popular project on freshmeat.net. I recently downloaded pre-release 1 of Mplayer 1.0 to see how much things have changed, if at all, since then. What I found is that while some things have changed, others have not.
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Half-Life 2 code leaked online
The makers of the eagerly awaited Half-Life 2 have appealed for help to track down who leaked the source code of the game on the internet.
The software is not the full game but contains core information about it.
Valve, the makers of Half-Life 2, said the leak followed a concerted hacking effort on the company's computers over a number of months.
The source code lies at the heart of a game and is kept a closely guarded secret to stop other people copying it.
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4 plead guilty in national software piracy scheme
Four men have pleaded guilty for their roles in an online piracy ring that illegally distributed tens of thousands of copyrighted materials through the Internet, authorities said.
Federal prosecutors said Thursday the guilty pleas are part of a national probe into pirated video games, movies, music files and computer software. Some of the file servers were located at the State University of New York at Albany, authorities said.
The investigation is continuing, and authorities say they expect to charges others in the scheme.
"The magnitude of this problem is serious and can't be underestimated," U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor said. "Stealing the intellectual property of others is no different from any other form of thievery."
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Jobs beats Gates as most important man in tech
Embracing open source for Apple's latest OS, the success of the iPod and proving, with iTunes, that there is a model for selling music online have helped Steve Jobs beat his old rival Bill Gates to be named silicon.com's number one Agenda Setter for 2003.
A panel of experts decided the annual poll by voting on three factors - global influence, decision-making prowess and longevity - and past winners include Sir Christopher Gent (2000), Steve Case (2001) and Rupert Murdoch (2002).
But while major themes in the balance of power emerge each year, such as media bosses last time around and mobile players the year before that, this year's top 50 wasn't dominated only by those at the helm of famous vendors such as Apple and Microsoft.
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Florida Dorms Lock Out P2P Users
The University of Florida has developed a tool to help extricate the school from the morass of peer-to-peer file trading, and early results show that it's succeeding.
Integrated Computer Application for Recognizing User Services, commonly called Icarus, debuted over the summer on the network that links all the residence halls on the UF campus.
The open-source program was developed by campus programmers to cut off the file sharing going on among students. Housing officials say the application educates students as it restricts them from peer-to-peer services.
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Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 Security Advisory:
A vulnerability has been reported in Windows, which can be exploited by malicious, local users to terminate certain privileged programs.
The problem is that the "PostThreadMessage" API allows any program to send a "WM_QUIT", "WM_CLOSE", or "WM_DESTROY" message to another program's thread on the same desktop. This can be exploited by unprivileged users to close a personal firewall or other privileged application running on a system without having permissions to do so.
Successful exploitation requires that the program's thread has a message queue, since the "PostThreadMessage" API will fail otherwise.
A PoC (Proof of Concept) exploit is available.
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Server up and running.
We've moved over to our new server.
We've got a couple of reviews that will be posted shortly and a few new site launches.
News will also start up now that everything is situated.
:)
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