WARNING: Possible Viral Beta Circulation

[sPaG]

Thank you for the kind words everybody. I had a typo in there somewhere lol. But pretty good for not running a spell check, and typing 126 WPM. I guess being a programmer for a living will do that to you.

It's people like you that give many of us a glimpse of hope. There are a lot of flamers, and assholes out there that come in to these forums and they can't act maturely. The bunch of you have shown your true colors.

After reading through many posts, it appears that this Virus/Trojan is a reality. Just be careful out there you guys. It's really not worth downloading this file. I keep seeing these pictures of folks running a custom map with absolutely no shaders... I could make one of those with the HL1 engine and post pictures if you want to see? :cheese:

 

[Unnamed_Player]

Originally posted by sPaG

After reading through many posts, it appears that this Virus/Trojan is a reality. Just be careful out there you guys. It's really not worth downloading this file. I keep seeing these pictures of folks running a custom map with absolutely no shaders... I could make one of those with the HL1 engine and post pictures if you want to see? :cheese:

There was a rumor going around that some of the code that was distributed might have a bit of trojan code inserted into it too. Doubtful but possible I guess.

If you have the code and you're that desperate to run around in a box with no shaders and wow all your friends with your mad VC++ skillz you can compile and use Worldcraft that is part of the code base and pull some textures from some other game or off the net and make your own "map". /sarcasm

The crappy screens I've seen from the binaries that are circulating aren't worth getting a virus over.

 

[eQUIV]

Yah but what if you were a gay guy trying to download the source and got the gay-porn. They'd open the file and be "WHAT THE ****! This isn't the HL2 source!.... HEY!! WHOOOPY it's free hot gay-porn! I guess I'll just jerk-off instead."

Well jokes on you then isn't it.

 

[GJaaGular]

see above

 

[Kerpal]

why would they put viruses in it if anything it'd be a trojan because they are more useful to hackers

 

[Myself]

When you are referring to more than one virus you say VIRUSES! not virii, unless this is one of those internet things like teh and sux0rs or what ever is going around. But if you are simply trying to find the plural of virus it is viruses.

 

[GJaaGular]

I got it an i aint got no virasses

 

[Spiff1333]

Format vs virus.....

format = teh win

 

[Unnamed_Player]

Originally posted by Myself
When you are referring to more than one virus you say VIRUSES! not virii, unless this is one of those internet things like teh and sux0rs or what ever is going around. But if you are simply trying to find the plural of virus it is viruses.

When talking about computer viruses the proper plural term is virii. Don't know why. Maybe some compsci nerd at the CERT thought it sounded cool. But that's the way it is.

 

[Azzy]

anyone who leeches it deserves to get slapped with a nasty virus

 

[CuPoJava]

Originally posted by Unnamed_Player
When talking about computer viruses the proper plural term is virii. Don't know why. Maybe some compsci nerd at the CERT thought it sounded cool. But that's the way it is.

Hmm...thanks for playing.
Only "l33t" 12 year old script kiddies use the word "virii."

 

[maleficarus™]

Nice Post sPaG!

It's cool that you brought this up because I have an interesting story for you. I have been online now since early 1997. For the past 5 years I never had any viruses on my PC. Then just last month my Cable ISP suspended my service saying my PC was sending Spam. Well anyways turns out my PC was infected with some worm or something. How I got it I'm not really sure but my guess is it was some attachment that I didn't see and opened.

My point is you take anything with the HL2 name attached to it and you have probably about 1 million HL fans out there wanting to download it. What better way to spread a virus or worm? I can't think of a better one to be honest. It would be the perfect catch, hook line and sinker!

I was thinking about this whole source code scam the other day and I came up with a conspiracy theory. Now I'm not saying this was what happened but the first question I always ask when something like this happened is who could benefit the most from a leaked HL2 source code? I can think of one company that could. That company is called:

NVIDIA

HL2 is the one game NVIDIA can't compete in with ATi. Actually it's so lopsided it's kind of embarrassing to be honest. It's not like we are talking about 5 frames here or even 10. But like playable vs. unplayable. Basically the way I see it NVIDIA could GAIN the most seeing and learning about the code of which there hardware can't render that well. Think about it for a second. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to perfect your VGA driver if you had the source code for the game that you so desperately need to excel in? Because frankly we are not just talking about the game HL2. We are also talking about the next generation of Counter-Strike and the DOZENS of game mods that will come out years down the road.

I personally think Valve should investigate NVIDIA. That would be the very first place I would look.

 

[Bubblegum_Punk]

Nvidia are not that desperate.

 

[maleficarus™]

Originally posted by Bubblegum_Punk
Nvidia are not that desperate.

You would be surprized. There stock fell after the Valve benchmarks came out on the net did you know that? We are talking a lot of green here dude and really if NVIDIA can't figure out a way to give good HL2 performance from there hardware, they will be stuck just making Nforce motherboards as they will lose the VGA market big time.

 

[lunamonkey]

Originally posted by He@t!
I Concur

Are you kidding?

There's a grammar error on the first line. No offence meant to Spag as it's a very nice write up.

Luna

EDIT : include quote

 

[Necromancer]

Originally posted by Bubblegum_Punk
Nvidia are not that desperate.

Who cares? nVidia Cards suck anyway. ATI's kick the shiznits out of nVidia cards on games produced now, so it's pretty obvious that they'll run HL2 better.

Also, Valve said that the GeForce4 and GeForceFX would run HL2's FMV sequences, just not as smoothly, much like everything else.

 

[sPaG]

Originally posted by lunamonkey

There's a grammar error on the first line. No offence meant to Spag as it's a very nice write up.

Ahhh! LOL, you spelled "offense" wrong. Although, I believe "offence" is a variant of "offense". Anyway, I put that post together in 5 minutes.. sorry if there were any errors. I know there were a couple. But not many. :cheese:

maleficarus™! Great post man! But you know, I don't think I agree with you on the nVIDIA thing. For the most part, I severely doubt nVIDIA would result to any form of illegal activity. Furthermore, nVIDIA was in close contact with VALVe anyway. I'm not sure if they had full access to the source, but even if they didn't, they were coaching VALVe on using the correct drivers and how to optimize for their chipsets. This has been confirmed by Gabe Newell in his presentation about ATI vs nVIDIA.

However, I definitely side with you on the virus/trojan theory. That's pretty much why I wrote what I wrote. Just like you said, this is an extremely popular game being closely watched and awaited by thousands of gamers around the world. It doesn't take a real intelligent hacker to figure out the rest, now does it?

Too bad this was "unstickied" by the moderators. The supposed "beta" that has been floating around, really doesn't appear to exist at all. But there are still many rumors floating around about one surfacing. Like many have suggested, i'm sure some files will contain "questionable" if not down-right malicious executables, while others will be "safe". Even then, it's not worth the risk. In many ways.

I'm just going to hang out for a while until VALVe releases it officially. Until then, i'm going to play "Call of Duty". Well, the demo anyway. The official game doesn't come out until the end of this month. But it's a GREAT game and will keep many of you occupied.

See you later!

 

[Gorgon]

Originally posted by Bubblegum_Punk
Nvidia are not that desperate.

Nvidia is losing tenth of millions right now because of this game.

:dozey:

 

[sPaG]

Originally posted by G0rgon
Nvidia is losing tenth of millions right now because of this game.

I'm not sure I can comment on how much they are actually losing, but I agree with G0rgon that they are in trouble. To be honest, i'm going to contribute to nVIDIA's problems by buying an ATI Radeon 9800 myself. And if any of you knew me, you would be surprised. I have been an nVIDIA user for years. In fact, I only bought nVIDIA. Never bought 3dfx in the past. The last ATI card I ever bought was a Mach 64. That was a long time ago. I'm sure many of you kiddies haven't heard of it. The card I had before that was a VGA 256. But it ran DOS games very well. :dork:

Since i'm a very big Half-Life fan, and love Counter-Strike, this is another investment I can't trust nVIDIA to pay out on. However, it's really a crapshoot sometimes. Doom3 runs better on nVIDIA, and kills ATI. I guess you guys need to make up your mind. Which game are you going to play most? What are you more excited about?

nVIDIA needs to pull their crap together. Especially for better DirectX9 support. Mark my words, the new DX version is going to start a very very new standard in the industry and for years to come.

 

[lunamonkey]

Originally posted by sPaG
... Doom3 runs better on nVIDIA, and kills ATI. ....

Why did you have to go and tell us that? Now what are imbeciles like me meant to do? I am meant to decide on my own?

I was planning on getting a Gigabyte Radeon 9600 pro for £300, but now am not so sure. Any suggestions?

Hopefully my trusted 5200 fx *cough* will run HL2 at more than 9fps..... :x

And Spag, offence is British

Luna

 

[vacs]

Scare tactics... what else.

The original beta leak by Anon (still available through BitTorrent) is completely virus/trojan/backdoor free. Free as in "not existing".

Of course there are many other beta releases available which popped up after the initial leak and some of them contain trojans but others not.

Again, the initial anon leak is safe.

Anyway, because valve could not keep their promises and at least release a benchmark on the 30th September which they promised officially before, the beta leak is the ideal way of checking whether your system will run HL2 or not... even though it's only a beta but you'll get an idea of the HL2 performance nevertheless.

 

[DjBourgeoisie]

People fail to realize just because a virus is not yet detected doesnt mean it doesnt exist. Just ask victims of past virus/worm attacks from the melissa virus and the i love you virus etc. Use your heads people, someone who hacked into valve and compiled source, and you trust him? Man some people are incredibly stupid. I hope all who DO have the leak find out down the road there were viruses in the compile, they would get what they deserve.

 

[silent]

I can see it now... Hackers getting hacked by hackers. Lovely

 

[hunteraz]

haw haw. :afro:

 

[ReZeroX]

thers only one virus i got thats apperent, and its somthing called winshow hijacker. only affect i can see is that it changes my homepage and cannot be removed, hopefully thats the worst that will happen...

 

[vacs]

Originally posted by DjBourgeoisie
People fail to realize just because a virus is not yet detected doesnt mean it doesnt exist. Just ask victims of past virus/worm attacks from the melissa virus and the i love you virus etc. Use your heads people, someone who hacked into valve and compiled source, and you trust him? Man some people are incredibly stupid. I hope all who DO have the leak find out down the road there were viruses in the compile, they would get what they deserve.

yeah, you must be right. You are not living in paranoia and the valve hacker has plans to take over the world. That's why he keeps releasing the source maps of HL2 without any executables included!

Geez, you americans need to get a grip on yourselves. Just try to forget for a moment about conspiracies and evil plots and come back to the real world.

Have you seen "Bowling for Colombine"? Talking about mass scare tactics...

 

[Mountain Man]

Let's use a bit of logic to arrive at a potential truth:

Is it so inconceivable that the person(s) who successfully hacked into Valve's system would be above including malacious code in the subsequently released content?

We're obviously dealing with a person or group of people with little moral bearing, so expecting them to treat you with benevolence is naive, to say the least.

 

[Mountain Man]

Originally posted by GJaaGular
I got it an i aint got no virasses

The tricky thing about computer viruses, you don't know they're lurking on your system until they drop their payload, and by then it's too late. They can sit dormant for days, or weeks, or even months, so just because you ran the code in question and didn't detect anything abnormal doesn't mean you are in the clear.

 

[Zargade]

Ladies and gentlemen, some of you are not getting it. I could be more than just viruses, it could be haker spyware. And if it is, then it is VERY difficult to find sometimes. If you just think its scare tactics, by all means get the program. Just hope you ain't got no important information in that computer like other game KEYS or credit card numbers.

P.S. Wish the mods would ban these people that just admited getting the code illegaly. Isn't there some rule against it or something?

 

[DjBourgeoisie]

Originally posted by vacs
yeah, you must be right. You are not living in paranoia and the valve hacker has plans to take over the world. That's why he keeps releasing the source maps of HL2 without any executables included!

Geez, you americans need to get a grip on yourselves. Just try to forget for a moment about conspiracies and evil plots and come back to the real world.

Have you seen "Bowling for Colombine"? Talking about mass scare tactics...

Actually, some of us actually have other things to worry about, and lives outside of video games, internet, and forums. I choose not to dl a leaked build because I would rather wait and play the finished product, not some buggy pos compile some kid threw together. If you think your special or getting a treat by seeing what hl2 is about/and contains, you need to get your priorities in order. Better yet, get a life.

 

[aFireInside0016]

Princess Frosty prety much summed up what I was going to say. What could the hackers get from us by including something to hack us with? Most of us dotn have anything on our PCs. and rec, wth, just b/c you wont believe that the beta is out, doesnt mean it isnt . Get w/ the picture, its out, there are wayyyy too many new pics, ect. out that prove its out. If you want me to prove it to you, I will open the beta and I can draw your name on a wall w/ some bullets....want me to?

 

[aFireInside0016]

Originally posted by DjBourgeoisie
Actually, some of us actually have other things to worry about, and lives outside of video games, internet, and forums. I choose not to dl a leaked build because I would rather wait and play the finished product, not some buggy pos compile some kid threw together. If you think your special or getting a treat by seeing what hl2 is about/and contains, you need to get your priorities in order. Better yet, get a life.

HAHAHA, if you think some kid just hacked Valve and stole the source, you're wrong, these were experienced hackers and they knew what they were doing. The beta ISNT crappy at all, trust me.

 

[Mr. Redundant]

this is in fact very true.
watch yourself
Im serious
if you think people are saying these things to scare you into not downloading you are wrong.
hell if you were gonna download you probably would have already but... if you havent seriously I HIGHLY recommend you stay away.
1 major trojan, 2 minor backdoors... something to do with steam and god knows what else thats all I found
:/ format now

Im not saying the hacker included it, could be the distributer.
you dont have to take anyone's word, just remember people did warn you.

Theres no point in argueing facts, I have nothing to gain from someone downloading or not downloading a beta, Im letting the community Im part of know what I have found to be fact, thats it.

 

[silent]

People are saying "Why would the hacker put a virus in the source if he wanted other people to be able to mess with it?"

Well duh.

Most of these hacker types are people who look forward to ruining people's days and conquering challenges. I'm sure the guy who broke into Valve's network didn't even mean to steal the source. Once he got in i'm sure he was like "sweet, I'll take this and put it on the internet. I'll get a lot of attention!" Hackers are people who see hacking as a challenge. That is why they are so hard to stop. These people will spend all of their freetime trying to hack things. To them it is fun. I completely understand

I used to make bombs for fun. Now don't think I'm crazy and report me to the police. I used to make some mean powerful bombs. Bombs that are totally illegal. I didn't care though. I just wanted to see how powerful and sophisticated a bomb I could make. What I wish I would have realized is that making bombs is dangerous and people can get hurt. Heck, once you've made one you are SO tempted to use it on a building that you have to quit not too. I wanted to blow up a building and have it be on the news, but when I saw a movie of a man's legs getting blow off I stopped making bombs for good.

Doing stuff like making bombs, hacking and even egging people's houses just pisses people off and ruins their day. Just remember what it is like to get nailed by one of these people and I don't see how you could continue with that behavior.

If you get the source, I do hope that you get a virus not cause i'm a biased hl2 fanboy, but more because you too will get to feel how shitty it is to have a virus **** your computer up.

 

[Azul]

ooooooooookay...^^^

Dude, do you happen to have a large manifesto typed up about how technology is going to enslave the human race?

Cuz that's cool if you do, just wondering. And no you can't have my mailing address...

 

[DjBourgeoisie]

Originally posted by darkmaster0016
HAHAHA, if you think some kid just hacked Valve and stole the source, you're wrong, these were experienced hackers and they knew what they were doing. The beta ISNT crappy at all, trust me.

Typical clueless response from yet another clueless child. From all the talk these forums were about how crappy the leaked build was and how buggy etc etc that is why I can only assume its nothing good as far as gameplay, just pretty to look at. Sorry but I am not jealous of anyone at all. Oh I got a leaked build of hl2 with models that stand around, and missing textures woohoo... Ya, im jealous allright

 

[XShrike]

Stupidity should be painful, if not fatal.

 

[vacs]

Originally posted by XShrike
Stupidity should be painful, if not fatal.

no, stupidity should be illegal... unfortunately it isn't

 

[Unnamed_Player]

Can we just let this thread die please.

It's old news and false besides.

 

[silent]

Originally posted by Azul
ooooooooookay...^^^

Dude, do you happen to have a large manifesto typed up about how technology is going to enslave the human race?

Cuz that's cool if you do, just wondering. And no you can't have my mailing address...

Everyone has a dark time in their life and mine was bombs. You'd be very suprised how many people make bombs. They're generally easy to make. Anyone to has even glanced at the Anarchist's Cookbook is tempted to make some of that stuff (Anarchist's Cookbook is wrong. Don't build what it talks about. Half the time it's fatal to you)

For other people Hacking is a dark time in their life. For some it is sex (damn I wish I had chosen that one). It just depends on where you stand in life.