Hackers breach Electronic Arts, stealing game source code and tools
lite.cnn.com
lite.cnn.com
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32332271
The FBI should keep an eye on hospitals for anyone showing up with burning bleeding eyes and a swelling itching brains and melting faces, from looking at EA's source code! ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1bNh-9Nj7U&ab_channel=HRViz...
Other symptoms include a tendency to participate in death marches, work from 9am to 10pm, abandon spouses and consider every day a crunch.
Here's an example of some highly toxic code they wasn't intended to escape the lab:
It’s witty and not dull, but does it bring any value to the discussion? I’d say not really
During that demo around 10:00, I accidentally fat-fingered the mouse and introduced a bug into the outdoor simulation. I couldn't figure out what I'd done or how to fix it, and we hadn't implemented "undo" in the code editor yet, so I just left it in. "There's all sorts of code like this in there. And it's kind of dangerous."
I could be entirely wrong though
Between GDC presentations and published computer graphics papers, the game industry is actually quite open about sharing its best ideas.
I would say very little, in a way bad advertising is advertising which is good advertising.
It might reveal some part of the scenario or features, and put pressure on the teams, but other than that, who really cares? Fans will talk about it, and that's only what this is.
Maybe competitors might get an insight on what games are planning to be, but I doubt that there is much innovation, so meh?
And it's not like those engines have tremendous engineering secrets either ways. I mean GPU are documented, and special shader effects are not that so hard to come by, what is difficult is getting developers who are able to understand how GPU work and to take advantage of those ever changing GPUs and APIs.
I really don't think the game is going to be available in a pirated copy, seen that building such AAA games is pretty difficult for developers who are not part of their teams, not to mention all the copy protection mechanisms.
Sure it's complex, but it's very use-case specific. Developers will often talk and share how they solve problems, so...
For games, hard work is just this: content (which has IP on it), debugging (which is specific to a certain game), handling GPUs (requires engineers, work is obsolete in 3 or 5 years), a few gameplay mechanics (cannot be patented).
Patents only matter when data is about some expensive, long term research that requires physical testing and labs, like a new molecule for a medicine, or some method or building a material.
Even when HL2 source code was stolen, it did not really matter.
I wonder if this will become the norm.
It makes things a little harder because reference aren’t available easily, and people didn’t read they’re email as frequently, but it was ok.
Picasso never said that, even if it the quality of the quote is debatable.
This seems like a strong argument against using open source codes. Should I take this argument seriously and avoid them?
The main issue for leaking source code of _games_, especially _multiplayer games_, is that people learn how to bypass the anti-cheat mechanisms which leads to a degraded online experience for everybody.
I worked on Tom Clancy's The Division and the mantra was always "write code like it will be public one day".
(in their case it meant don't get to persnickety about a library not working how you wanted or swearing about how Windows was batshit insane at times -- but it also applied to making sure you did't just assume the code wouldn't be read by malicious people)
The multiplayer part of some games made the single player section worse, because of the drastic anti-cheating measures.
A closed source projects can have thousand of security bugs no-one will never know about. Since it's closed, it's hidden so no problem... until it's leaked.
In contrast, source code of games is a trade secret. It is being worked at by famously overworked developers. And companies in the industry are known to sit on vulnerability reports for months or years.
Don't ever install games on a machine you use for work or identity.
- Banking.
- Insurance.
- Main Google account.
- SSH keys.
- GPG keys.
- Pictures of any important documents.
- Digital copies of any important documents.
Basically: the moment you start installing games on a computer, assume it makes its contents world read/writeable.
It's always easier to be on the attacking side of cyber security. If the attackers have good intel, and the defense isn't organized, their work is much easier.
With (popular) open source projects, there are hundreds of eyeballs looking at the source and trying to fix security issues before they can be exploited.
The closed source project is typically less secure, but attackers also have less information to work with. Open source is typically more secure, but attackers have more information. Leaked closed source is the worst of both worlds.
And only if the codebase is routinely looked over and tested, no part of the codebase gets forgotten and becomes unmaintainable because somebody left the company.
Open source has the added benefit that maintainers typically don't disappear complete from the project overnight because they got a new job/were fired.
But even then you have the whole area of protocol reverse engineering and data fuzzing which doesn't require the source at all.
His argument is also complete horsesh_t to prop up the firm and to also spread FUD. Just look at this sentence: 'identify deeper flaws for exploit', tells you they don't even understand that you find the vulnerabilities first and THEN you develop an exploit for it.
Another "death sentence" of journalistic quality at the BBC whilst also advertising for firms that have clueless spokespeople.