One of the most highly anticipated games expected to be released soon is Half-Life 2, and the recent announcement that people could start downloading parts of it ahead of time only increased the frenzy. Then when Gabe Newell, head of the company, announced on a message board that it was ‘going gold’ (i.e., ready for mass manufacture) on Monday, everyone went nuts. Nearly every single forum I checked that day had at least one message like “OMG OMG HALF-LIFE 2 GOLD MONDAY!!!!!1!!1”
Except it wasn’t true. Turns out that Gabe had his message board account compromised and it was some prankster responsible for the message. And the L33T hacker tactic which allowed this security lapse to happen? He guessed the password: ‘gaben’
No wonder they had their source-code stolen…
You’d think after movies like Hackers, and the written, published, and mass-sold release of the infamous Manifesto, people would clue in to better personal security measures.
Does this twit leave his car unlocked (or leave the key in the ignition) all the time, too? :-)