Half-Life 2 Source Leak

Oct 02, 2003 4:16pm CST tags: Valve, Steam, Half-Life 2, Leak
In case you hadnt heard, the source code for Valve Software's Half-Life 2 has been leaked. Here's a statement from Gabe Newell via HalfLife2.net

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

Important: Just to be clear, it's ok to talk about the leak and the possible implications, however we'll nuke you and your family if you even make the most slight clever hint of where to download it or even screenshots of it.
        

Related Stories

  • Late Night Cinema: Half-Life 2 Recreated in Live-action 'Escape from City 17'

    118 Comments | Feb 13, 2009 9:00pm CST

    A technically impressive recreation of Half-Life 2's City 17 marks the first entry to "Escape from City 17," a new series of webisodes that combines...

  • Black Mesa Mod Trailer Teases Prettier Half-Life

    185 Comments | Dec 01, 2008 11:56am CST

    Back in 2004, a small team began crafting a mod that would recreate Valve's first Half-Life with the latest in graphical bells and whistles. Come 2008...

  • New Dystopia Release

    15 Comments | Jan 08, 2006 2:18pm CST

    Update 4 of the Dystopia mod for Half-Life 2 is now available, adding two new maps and fixing more bugs. If you have a previous version installed ther...

  • They Hunger: Lost Souls Preview

    20 Comments | Jan 07, 2006 9:01am CST

    Planet Half-Life's five days of Black Widow Games coverage ends with a look at They Hunger: Lost Souls, the zombie infested Source Engine powered shoo...

  • Black Widow Games Q&A

    5 Comments | Jan 04, 2006 8:24am CST

    As part of their Black Widow Games: Five Days of Fear feature, Planet Half-Life today posted a Q&A with the guys working on the Source Engine game T...

  • Source Engine Goes 64-Bit

    46 Comments | Dec 22, 2005 7:08pm CST

    We received this press release from Valve Software, announcing that the Half-Life 2 developer has hooked up with AMD to create a 64-bit version of the...

  • On Source's Cinematic Effects

    14 Comments | Dec 09, 2005 11:24am CST

    There's an article on the cinematic abilities of the Source Engine at bit-tech.net, as they recently attended a presentation by Valve Software where t...

  • Steam Q&A

    10 Comments | Dec 08, 2005 9:27am CST

    Computer Games has a Q&A posted with Valve's Mike Dunkle, talking about the company's Steam develivery platform. According to Dunkle, we might actuall...

  • New DOD: Source Map Now Available

    29 Comments | Nov 30, 2005 8:07pm CST

    As expected, the Day of Defeat: Source map Argentan is now available upon restarting Steam. The update also fixes a Rag Doll Kung Fu bug. There's no w...

  • New Garry's Mod Release

    1 Comment | Nov 28, 2005 8:32am CST

    Over at FileShack you can now download version 9.0.4 of the popular Garry's Mod for Half-Life 2, offering an improved spawning menu while also fixing ...