I'm happy to see that, while he did something wrong, because he was honest and openly remorseful throughout, he ended up not going to prison. The cops even seemed cordial, they let him get breakfast and a smoke.

I wonder how differently things would have played out if he lived in the US.

I was in a similar position once, many years ago, in the early days of the web. I had managed to get parts of the source code to a popular online game (no real hacking here, they left a tarball in an open directory I stumbled upon), and being a foolish young kid, I decided to brag about my insider knowledge of unfinished features on a website. A few weeks later, the company contacted me with a job offer... they just needed my name and address to start sending me checks. Fortunately, I wasn't that dumb.

I found the story to be quite tragic. This kid really saw the people at Valve as his heroes. Valve knew this and totally abused of that fact. They tricked him and was planning to hand him to the FBI, despite the fact he was (still is) their biggest fan and that the leak was accidental. I would have really hired him if I was in Gabe's position. He had both passion and skills. I think he would make an awesome YC applicant if he directed those to creating a web startup.

Am I the only one who thinks what he did was not only criminal but morally wrong, and that he deserved to go to prison for a long time?

I realize that everybody likes to call themselves a "hacker" because they can program a computer, but this is an actual black-hat hacker. There are bad guys in the world and he's one of them. He wrote malware. He stole source code and gave it to the world. And this wasn't some evil corporation he was trying to bring to justice for its crimes. This was Valve. All they do is make cool games for the world. It's incredibly difficult work and they do a fantastic job. What kind of asshole do you have to be to shit all over them like this kid did?

Considering that he's been sentenced and assuming he has served the term of probation, if he were to set foot on the US, could he be tried and sentenced again, or does Double Jeopardy protect him even if he already had proceeded through the German court system?

I'd really like to hear Gabe's side to this story.

I liked this quote:

"For some reason they thought there was a connection between me and Sasser, which I denied. Sasser was big news back then and its author, Sven Jaschan, was raided the same day as me in a co-ordinated operation, because they thought I could warn him.

"My bot used the same vulnerability in the LSASS service that his did, except it didn't crash the host system, so I guess they thought I gave him the exploit code. Of course I denied this and told them that I never write such shoddy code."

Glad to see it had a relatively happy ending.

At the risk of repeating a tired Internet cliche, I think the leak may have helped Half-Life 2.

If the project was already months behind schedule and had a year before a GM build would be ready, having the source code leaked may have given hardcore gamers reassurance that the game was actually coming along and would be finished at some point.

Of course, there's also the newsworthiness and buzz coming from the leak itself.

Unless it is a small project and works without a dataceter the sourcecode itself is useless. Yet, so many people believe that there is actually any (usable) value in the source code alone.

I flunked (thank god) an interview with a company once that ended up going belly up. The capital came from angel investors (mostly lawyers). When they ran out of money they locked everybody out of the premises (even though all their stuff was still in the building) for the fear somebody would take the source. This was 6 or 7 years ago.. To this date these lawyers still sit on their precious source code.

In the reddit thread ( http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/fpkav/the_boy_who_st... ) he* has answered some questions.

* I'm not actually sure it is him, but he is plausible enough.

What I learned from this is: Never trust any of your friends or family when you have such important things in your hands.

You know in everyone of us is this little devil and if you have something which is important you can earn something with it (money or even credit in the community) there is a good chance that people will go the devil way.

I even would consider saying I even DON'T trust myself on such important and valued things!

Automatic weapons were pointing at his head and the words "Get out of bed. Do not touch the keyboard" were ringing in his ears.

Would they really have shot him in the head if he touched the keyboard? My guess is no.

Story reminds me of the book "Cuckoo's egg" by Clifford Stoll

Site's down, text-only Google cache view

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:T1eI3Z6...

What I don't get is why the police had to wake them up with a gun pointed to his head. Is this standard procedure for hackers, or criminals in general? Is it because some time ago it was decided that hackers are terrorists?

Suppose I cheated on my taxes (which I would of course never do, but I think many people consider that fair game), would the police also wake me with a gun pointed at my head?

Oh! So it was real? I remember downloading a file called "HL2 Source Code.rar", long time ago, from eDonkey network. Never payed enough attention to it, thinking it was a fake!

I wonder why Valve didn't offered him a job. He was naive but talented and passionate about gaming.

End of page two: "The cat was out of the bag," says Gembe. "You cannot stop the internet."

Great attitude, almost civil-disobediencesque.

I'm impressed by the shear amount of knowledge the kid had. Especially at the age that he did it.