[deftnerd]

It's stories like these that's inspired me to start up a new project at oppressed.me. I'm trying to compile a list of hackers and hacktivists that have been imprisoned in order to let the internet easily send them correspondence. I'm also going to ask publishers for donations of older copies of technical books to send them.

A lot of hackers are just kids that make a stupid mistake. During their time in jail, their skills get soft or they'll get hardened by their time there. My hope is to let them know that people on the outside still are thinking of them and to help them keep their skills up-to-date.

I'm a bit overwhelmed with a startup at the moment, but I anticipate the non-profit to be formed and to launch sometime in the fall.

[zaroth]

I think the system did quite well with Gembe all things considered...

  The judge sentenced him to two years' probation, citing his
  rough childhood and the way he had worked to turn his life
  around as considerations when it came to deciding on the
  relatively lenient punishment.

The arrest at gunpoint sounds quite dramatic, but then again they let him stop for coffee and a cigarette on the way out, so this is not the typical SWAT. They did offer that it was a concurrent raid along with Sven Jaschan (author of Sasser) and they thought there was potential for a tip-off.

I was cringing the whole time reading about the interrogation. I can imagine this whole thing would have ended so much worse for Gembe if he had actually gone for that job interview. Just try and compare Gembe to Weev, you might start pining for good ol Schönau im Schwarzwald.

[ago]

You're completely right. The police were nice to me, probably because I was very cooperative. The team was about 15 people from the LKA, including the head of the cybercrime unit. I did cause a bit of a scare when I reached for the kitchen knife to cut some bread, but they quickly realized I didnt want to stab anyone. Of course I knew that I was far better off being in Germany than anywhere else, so I wasn't worried much. Overall I'm quite satisfied with how it went for me, even though it would be 4 years until the trial where I had to report to the police 3 times a week. I had the opportunity to turn my life around and get a good job. If I got put into jail neither me nor society would have been better off considering I paid a lot of taxes in the meantime and haven't done anything criminal since.

[Fuxy]

To be honest if find it kind of a dick move that Valve choose to have you arrested instead of making you work your ass off to make up for your mistake.

It is justified what you did was illegal and not cool but they had the chance to turn it into something positive.

[meowface]

I don't really think so. If I was working on a game for years, only to find out someone broke into my network, planted keyloggers on lots of my computers, and stole all of the source code for my game, I'd be interested in arresting the perpetrator as well. The game was practically Gabe's second baby.

Plus, there was no way Gabe could have known that Axel was 1) truly apologetic or 2) wasn't the one who also published the code publicly. And even if it was known, the fact that he shared it with friends showed that he didn't seem to care that much about protecting it.

That being said, I do work in the security industry and understand that Axel's motivations weren't evil or anything. Gabe still did what he should have done.

[Fuxy]

Well the damage was already there wasn't much he or anybody else could do about that so giving the guy a chance to make up for his mistake wouldn't have hurt.

Then again I'm sure he was really pissed so I can't blame him for doing what he did.

[CocaKoala]

I can definitely think of at least one way that hiring the guy who hacked into your company's computers, planted keyloggers, and stole the source code of your project could hurt. I thought of another while I was typing that sentence.

Maybe the kid who did it wasn't actually sorry; maybe he was hoping to get more access so he could steal more stuff. That's a way it could hurt.

Maybe bringing the kid who stole your team's work and demoralized everybody isn't going to do great things for the company morale; that's another way it could hurt.

Giving people second chances is great and all, but it seems silly to say "[it] wouldn't have hurt"; it could have very easily gone wrong.

[munificent]

> giving the guy a chance to make up for his mistake wouldn't have hurt.

That presumes you are 100% confident that the guy is completely remorseful and will no longer do anything wrong. Given past behavior, why should Valve have had that confidence?

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I do not believe Valve had much control over that. They needed to report it (failure to do so might get them in trouble with regulators, insurance, and all that crap), and once they do they don't get any say in how the investigation or prosecution is handled. Even if Newell refused to testify, chances are this wouldn't hinder prosecution very much... plenty of other evidence to stick it to the kid.

[infinotize]

Should we not arrest master car theives because they are exceptionally talented? It's not unreasonable that their talent could be fit into some productive use. What about people who burglarize homes? Who fix soccer/football matches? Shoplifters? Assuming nonviolence in these cases. Would you preume perpetrators of all of those crimes just have to "work their asses off" to make up for "mistakes?" How do you arbitrarily draw a line and say such and such crime should not be punished or enforced and another should be?

[outworlder]

Nope, we should not just arrest them. However, they should all be punished in some way.

'prison' and 'punishment' aren't synonyms. Make someone work their ass off to repay a crime IS punishment. As is locking them up, but by doing that, you severely decrease the chances of that person ever being a productive member of the society again.

Of course, should that person break the terms agreed upon, then I guess prison time is warranted as an additional punishment. And even in this case, with non violent criminals, in a setting where they can still work.

[DanBC]

I strongly feel that those people should face some form of restorative justice rather than punitive fines or prison.

Prison is fantastically expensive, not particularly effective, and severely degrades the offender's life.

Restorative justice is much cheaper and more effective at fixing the offending behaviour, and the results of that behaviour.

Prison should be left for violent or unrepentant recidivists.

[PavlovsCat]

Did the leaking of the source code lead to competing games springing up, which cut into the profits of Valve, or any other damage?

[owlmanatt]

No, but it's easy to say that with the benefit of hindsight.

Nobody knew everything would turn out OK back before HL2 was released.

[enimodas]

if you were to enter the US now, would the police/fbi arrest you?

[gambler]

The arrest at gunpoint sounds quite dramatic, but

There are no buts here. Non-violent offenders shouldn't be arrested at gun point. And it's not just a matter of scaring someone, it's a matter of public safety. I don't get why whenever an issue like that comes out, there is always someone jumping to defend dangerous practices like that.

[codexon]

I don't feel sorry for malware writers. They are not oppressed and deserve what they got.

And this guy also stole people's software keys.

If they were talented coders, they could've found less destructive ways to make money. But he decided to go the greedy route.

[FiloSottile]

> If they were talented coders, they could've found less destructive ways to make money. But he decided to go the greedy route.

Let me guess: you are a US citizen, or anyway live in a country where developer positions abound. Well, not everyone is. Some people live in small towns where the cool programming positions are adapting invoice management software for small businesses.

Also this was before Freelancer.com, before code.org. And he was a boy, he couldn't just relocate. Also, before the App Store.

This is exactly the curiosity that people who enter the InfoSec world feel, coupled with real skills. Often too much skills and too little to do to start.

Then you stumble upon a IRC channel and a world of challenges opens in front of you.

By the way, he asked Valve to hire him. Maybe he just didn't find "less destructive ways to make money" yet.

Don't judge if people are oppressed (or better, repressed) if you have never been, please, either because at that age YOU had the occasions or guidance, or because you hadn't that curiosity or talent.

[sillysaurus3]

Some people live in small towns where the cool programming positions are adapting invoice management software for small businesses.

That's a legitimate programming job. Cool software rarely makes money. Cool software that makes money (game development) doesn't pay very much.

Then you stumble upon a IRC channel and a world of challenges opens in front of you.

A book is far more challenging, because in an IRC channel you're a fish in a small pond. Eventually you grow to be the biggest fish, or forever limit yourself to being small. What a book can't give is peer recognition. But peer recognition is a vain motive, and vanity is rarely lucrative. A book also can't answer questions, but you can use IRC or a website like stackexchange for that.

If anyone reading this has personal experience flirting with blackhattery, please carefully consider what you're doing and why you're doing it. (And if you'd like someone to talk to, please feel free to shoot me an email. I'd like hearing about your experiences and your thoughts.)

[FiloSottile]

I think I should stress I'm speaking about young people.

Peer recognition is critical when starting at that age. Also careful consideration is not exactly common.

I'm in no way alleging that it is a reasonable way to go for a mature professional, but I acknowledge the charm it has for the young high-schooler that is being "taught" Excel at school and being told not to fiddle with that weird black terminal.

These boys and girls should not have their lives destroyed by a harsh punishment for their curiosity, that in a different setting would have been highly rewarded. I can totally picture myself doing the same errors in different conditions.

Btw, management software is a legitimate programming job of zero interest to security people. Just different curiosity fields.

[jakejake]

It's a kinda strange thing. Before the digital age kids like myself just did not have access to many things that could get them into so much trouble. I caused my share of mischief when I was a kid, just like most boys will do. Probably the worst tools I had at my disposal were eggs or snowballs to throw at cars. The opportunity for me to reach out from my bedroom and cause damage to a multi-national corporation or government just was not available to me or anybody at the time. It's hard to imagine what I could have done as a kid to even get the attention of the FBI, let alone have them trying to trap me in a sting operation. Kids today have a lot more ways to do some serious damage and get themselves into real trouble.

[atmosx]

I wonder what % of HN people never made anything illegal, like:

    * Hack into a remove computer server/friends PC.
    * Broke a WEP/WPA wifi network to gain access
    * Performed MiTM to see what kind of data can sniff
    * Performed brute-force dictionary attack without being asked.
    * Shared illegal digital material with friends

I feel it's about ~ 3%.

[icebraining]

You probably didn't have access because you didn't look for it. A kid with the right mindset and a copy of the Anarchist Cookbook or similar could cause a lot of panic and draw a lot of attention.

The difference is not access, it's the inherently nonviolent nature of digital. It's easier to get a kid to care about not hurting others than about not hurting an abstract legal entity like a company.

[psykotic]

> Cool software that makes money (game development) doesn't pay very much.

Your thinking must be stuck in the last century. By the time I entered the game industry 13 years ago, salaries were already on par with the software industry at large. My first full-time position was in 2003 and paid $85,000/year. Based on the numbers I've seen, game programmers currently earn significantly more than web developers with an equivalent amount of experience, despite the wage-inflationary effect of the VC money faucet.

The coolness factor used to play a greater role. I would say it still affects the supply side for QA, design and very entry-level positions in programming. For programmers with any level of competency and experience, its role is negligible.

[Bahamut]

Are you sure about that? After 1 1/2 years in web development I am making significantly more than all of my game developer friends (even 2x some).

[psykotic]

I'm going on personal knowledge and IGDA salary surveys. What part of the industry are your friends in? I should maybe have mentioned that the growing F2P, casual, mobile segment bears little resemblance, economically and otherwise, to what I would consider the traditional AAA game industry (which may eventually go the way of the dodo).

[damon_c]

I have experienced similar. I have surmised that it's because as a web developer, sometimes the work I do for my clients one day translates into actual dollars either saved or generated the very next day.

It seems easy to justify paying well given that immediacy as opposed to a developer spending much more time/money optimizing GPU physics engines whose benefits would not be felt until the game was slightly better than its competition when it is released in a year.

[n1ghtmare_]

As a web developer, that's very strange to me. Honestly game development seems MUCH harder (from what I've experienced). Not sure why that's the case.

[sillysaurus3]

What are your thoughts on this alternate hypothesis? Rather than the whole gamedev industry being on par, perhaps only RAD's salaries have been.

I know your personal network is extremely large. If you have a lot of knowledge about the topic of gamedev salaries, I'd love to hear more. Since talking about salaries with colleagues is typically verboten, I'm curious how you collected your salary datapoints and what your sample size is.

There's a lot of anecdotal evidence of studios underpaying interns and programmers who are straight out of college, and regularly working people 60 or 80 hours a week. The anecdotal evidence fits my own personal experience, but perhaps my experience isn't representative of the whole industry; maybe I was just unlucky with my first couple studios.

[psykotic]

I'm not using my own salary history as a benchmark. The IGDA salary surveys and my exposure to a range of developers seem to bear out my remarks. As for how I know salaries outside of public surveys, I am on a private forum where people talk about both their own salaries anonymously and what their companies typically offer when hiring.

I appended a paragraph to the original post explaining the effect of coolness on first-job salaries. I do think it plays a role there. Companies like EA are notorious for using fresh graduates as a revolving source of underpaid labor. As for long hours, my impression (here I have no survey data) is that it's become much rarer.

I think what happened economically is that by the early to mid 2000s, the main technical challenges of game development had almost nothing to do with anything specific to games. Compare that to the impression of game development you might have gotten from reading Abrash's articles on Quake. Because of that, good game programmers were able to easily get jobs outside of games, and good non-game programmers were able to quickly get up to speed on gamedev specifics. Hence wages equalized. That also explains why wages for designer and artists are still relatively lower.

[codexon]

> Also this was before Freelancer.com, before code.org.

This was in 2004, 3 years after the dot com bubble burst and was getting rosy again. Everyone and their mother's with a blog were making hundreds a month.

Programmers have been peddling shareware since BBS days.

Are you really calling Germany a 3rd world country?

> Some people live in small towns where the cool programming positions are adapting invoice management software for small businesses.

So why is this not legitimate work?

> Often too much skills and too little to do to start. Then you stumble upon a IRC channel and a world of challenges opens in front of you. Don't judge if people are oppressed (or better, repressed) if you have never been, please, either because at that age YOU had the occasions or guidance, or because you hadn't that curiosity or talent.

This is a pretty arrogant statement. Many programmers don't program malware not because they aren't smart enough, they don't do it because it is socially unacceptable and they don't have a criminal mind.

If you feel the need to "learn" about security, don't exploit, trojan, or ddos my server. Do it to your own computer.

[NAFV_P]

> Don't judge if people are oppressed (or better, repressed) if you have never been, please, either because at that age YOU had the occasions or guidance, or because you hadn't that curiosity or talent.

I'm about four years older than Gembe, when I was 18 I endured:

Threats of violence, death threats, constant insults (such as 'paedophile', 'baby rapist', 'retard', 'cunt', 'fat cunt', 'queer'), people spitting in my face, prank calls at two in the morning, false accusations (eg. being accused of threatening someone, said someone would regularly say to me "I'm going to kick your fucking head in"). Being called 'cunt' every other day tends to become a drag after twenty years or so.

My 33rd birthday is fast approaching, I still have trouble with other members of society treating me poorly. When most people go to work, they don't expect to put up with threats of being punched in the face. When you complain about your treatment at work, you don't expect to lose your job a week later.

I've spent the last two years learning programming, ten years ago I decided to learn a load of maths (my education wasn't that good). On both occasions the response often was "stick to what you are capable of" or "go and learn something useful instead". Or how about the time someone at the Job Centre decided I was incapable of filling out forms by myself, then filled it on my behalf without my permission, complete with a few silly spelling mistakes.

Gembe sounds to me like he has had it easy.

[macspoofing]

I think you're being a tad melodramatic. I think this guy should be held accountable because he did wrong. The 2 years of probation he got feels reasonable.

[EdwardDiego]

> Don't judge if people are oppressed (or better, repressed) if you have never been, please, either because at that age YOU had the occasions or guidance, or because you hadn't that curiosity or talent.

Nice justification of criminality. "But I was bored and talented!"

Oh dear, who are we to stand in the way of your genius then?

[dsuth]

Nice black-and-white view of humanity. I felt for this guy, because it could easily have happened to me, and my upbringing was probably a paradise compared to his.

Especially in the case of juveniles, we (as a society) should be understanding of minor indiscretions, and look to guide kids onto a better path. Thankfully the German justice system seemed to get that.

[EdwardDiego]

> Nice black-and-white view of humanity

I don't have a black and white view, I just don't buy "I was bored and clever" as a justification for breaking the law.

[oscargrouch]

> I don't have a black and white view, I just don't buy "I was bored and clever" as a justification for breaking the law.

What is "the law", for who and by whom they are created for?

We need to first realize that there are no such a thing as "The law", and the limits of right and wrong are pretty shady if you think we live in a world that is multicultural and multi-subjective with several different realities and values, all of them valid in their own context..

For me "The law" here, which we supposed that are controlled by the state in our own interests, are actually serving corporate interests.. the same ones the US(at least the people) now are fighting against in cases like the net neutrality..

Whatever "The Law" is, it must serve their own people, and care if the execution of the law are being effective not only for the society in general, but also for the people being convicted by it..

In that context, we need to ask, why "the american society" represented by "the law" thought that kid was a risk to them, in a way he should be in prison for it..

The other aspect is , the culture and the companies created in american soil have to right to use the american law to put a german kid in jail

What values are you defending, when you put a kid the way they did in prison? what this gonna do with the kid? destroy his life? sure!! for what? this kid did marketing to HL2 for free!! Valve made millions of it!!

I think it didnt work for the society in general and less so for the kid.. really America scares me(as a outsider), sometimes the same way a country where i would be in doubt about my human rights being respected.. because of things like this...

I think this is not something to be proud of, but ashamed

[nailer]

An odd position, as you're well known for hiring someone to break into TriOptimum and remove ethical constraints for the Sentient Hyper Optimised Data Access Network.

[nitrogen]

A pragmatic approach to the situation might suggest that reward is a better deterrent than punishment in these cases.

[noir_lord]

> Some people live in small towns where the cool programming positions are adapting invoice management software for small businesses.

That's been essentially my entire (for money) programming career and I adore it, taking a crappy manual/outdated process and refining it to create a tool that becomes a core part of a customers business is vastly rewarding to me.

[NamTaf]

Why should we not treat people who make mistakes like humans if they show genuine remose and a desire to reform, such as this guy or e.g.: Kevin Mitnick? The justice system is supposed to be (in most countries, at least) to be a method of both punishment and rehibilitation. Why not find ways to assist them in completing the latter?

I don't think it's particularly farfetched to expect relatively socially ostracised teenaged boys to not make the best judgement decisions right as they are developing their computer science skills. Most of them end up becoming relatively well-adjusted (within the scope of an introverted computer nerd) people so why not help them in that development?

[pekk]

Why should we not start with black guys instead of making special exceptions for white kids committing "white collar" crimes? Why does the involvement of computers make some criminals better than others?

[LukeB_UK]

I see nothing in what NamTaf said that means we should be 'making special exceptions for white kids committing "white collar" crimes'. To me they're saying that we should treat anyone as a human if they show genuine remorse and a desire to change. This could apply to any crime committed by any race, any age and any gender.

The fact that you throw the race card down so quickly when it comes to a discussion about crime concerns me.

[garric]

He's not saying that we shouldn't. But the U.S. is overwhelmingly focused on punishment, retribution, and incapacitation rather than rehabilitation. Essentially victim blaming, if you want to look at it like that. Opinion: It's going to take system-wide reform to accomplish anything meaningful.

[NamTaf]

I was specifically trying to avoid making a judgement on particular nations' systems because I didn't particularly want to bring that in to it. You are right however and that's touched on in the article, where the German federal police say that he was lucky they got to him before their US equivalents did. The US system is far more punitive than many European equivalents.

[paulhauggis]

so..a person that murders an innocent person is now a victim?

some people are past the point of rehabilitation and should be in prison.

[Jtsummers]

> some people are past the point of rehabilitation and should be in prison.

If we made a serious effort of rehabilitation in the US penal system, then this might be fair. We don't. Prisoners, especially those who commit the crimes in their youth, are screwed under our current system. The younger criminals, like their non-criminal youth counterparts, just don't know or don't appreciate the options available to them regarding education and learning trade skills. We put them into an environment with other people we've given up on and somehow expect that when they get out a year or a decade later they'll be ready to reintegrate into society. They didn't have the skill set going in, and they won't have it coming out. Many of them will continue to live on the fringes of our society, perhaps making a meager living as unskilled laborers. Others will fall into a crowd that keeps them involved in crime or other "antisocial", or however you want to describe it, behavior.

[tfigment]

As harsh as this sounds, I agree. My brother is my personal example. He had 4-5 chances at rehabilitation. First it was small stuff like pawning my mom's jewelry then it was breaking and entering to the neighbors or my dad's truck or whatever as I've not heard all of the charges. The system gave him several breaks and it would last 6 months (or less) before he was at it again each time worse than the last. I am only grateful that he is in for the next 20 years so he cannot be even worse. Also as a juvenile the book was not thrown at him and was always released back to custody of my father who was very welcoming and tried his best but some people are beyond hope.

The only good thing that came from him was my nieces and even they didn't really turn out that great due to probably a twisted childhood and weird relation with dad.

[lmm]

Because violent crime is, uh, worse than non-violent crime? Because it harms others more directly, and because the second-order effects of living in a society where violent crime happens are much worse than those of living in a society where white-collar crime happens?

[buttscicles]

Violence wasn't mentioned at all

[im3w1l]

Let me cite another comment.

"I felt for this guy, because it could easily have happened to me,"

This doesn't explain why we ought treat these crimes as different. But it does explain why we do treat them different. I think.

[vezzy-fnord]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation

"What about the people wrongfully on death row?"

[ago]

I agree that what I did was bad, but to say that it takes no talent is just wrong. In fact some of the things were more challenging than anything I've come accross at any of my jobs (programming embedded device firmware, test automation and realtime graphics) in the last 10 years. And no, I couldn't find even a "boring" programming job where I lived. Of course I tried, I tried a lot. Really, you have no idea what kind of shithole the place I grew up at was for programmers. Still, that doesn't excuse what I did, and I'm sorry for it.

[sillysaurus3]

The past is the past. You shouldn't have to run around apologizing for the rest of your life. And I hope you feel welcome in communities like HN. You have a lot of talent.

What have you been up to over the years? It'd be cool to hear about your career and life in general.

[Jtsummers]

> I don't feel sorry for malware writers. They are not oppressed and deserve what they got.

Few people in US prisons [1] deserve what they're getting. It takes a cold-hearted prick to honestly believe what you've written.

[1] While this guy wasn't, the sort of people deftnerd is talking about are.

[PhantomGremlin]

The problem is that this guy was young, relatively speaking, maybe about 20. The headline calls him a "boy", so he was certainly under 21.

By the time I was 21, I certainly wouldn't have done something like what he did. But, just a few years earlier, say at 18, yes, I did stupid things. In his position I probably could have done what he did. At that age many "boys" brains just aren't developed enough to truly understand right and wrong.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be punished. But I am saying they definitely shouldn't be punished harshly. In this case he was lucky to receive two years of probation as punishment. Something like that, or perhaps what we call "community service", is certainly more appropriate than throwing him in adult jail with hardened criminals.

[macspoofing]

>They are not oppressed and deserve what they got.

Depends what you mean by that. In this guy's case, had he boarded the plane he would have gotten two decades in an American jail, versus two years of probation in Germany. I think he should be held accountable, but somehow, given the nature of the crime and the surrounding context, I think Germany got it right.

[pandatigox]

Some of the people behind bars are because they did something that was morally right but condoned by the government. While I can't argue for the guy mentioned in the article, people like Bradley Manning are wasting away their lives. Do you really don't want to help these victims?

[Jtsummers]

I don't like doing this (replying without actually extending the conversation) but you've missed a word:

  morally right but not condoned by the government.
                    ^^^

[codexon]

This guy doesn't belong in the same category as Manning and Aaron Swartz.

[hueving]

How was what Chelsea Manning did morally right? Leaking that much information that could put other peoples' lives at risk isn't exactly morally right.

[Fuxy]

You're assuming he made money.

Not everybody does it for money actually his motivation was quite clear he liked the games but couldn't afford to buy them legit.

A situation i can relate with given I've been in a similar one.

Nowhere in this article was there a mention of hacking in order to make money.

[norswap]

How sad it must be, to live without compassion.

[epsylon]

I must have been following the grugq[1] way too much because all I couldn't help thinking about the massive OPSEC mistakes he did.

Fortunately he was apprehended by the German Police, but things would've been way different had took that plane.

[1] There's a great presentation from him on video, including analysis of OPSEC failures from other hacker groups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XaYdCdwiWU

[2] Another timeless classic: "Don't talk to [the] police", which explains why it is never in your interest to talk to the police when you are suspected of a crime (even if you are innocent): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

[cabbeer]

Sounds like a cool project. Let me know if you want some front end help.

[lotsofmangos]

I'm also going to ask publishers for donations of older copies of technical books to send them.

Not allowed to send books for UK prisoners as it contravenes their new "incentives and earned privileges scheme". Books are a luxury to be earned, apparently. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/24/ban-books-pri...