Valve bans Game Developer from Steamworks for pointing out a vulnerability

[Amaror]

but still stealing money, hell even if they didnt theyd still be violating private property wouldnt they?

he still took advantage of the exploit

How did he take advantage of the exploit? He used it simply to show of the exploit itself.
If he had used the exploit to hack a thousand users bank accounts and show that to Valve, THAT would have been taking advantage of the exploit.

 

[Lt. Rocky]

Very disappointing move on Valve's part, especially considering that they made an attempt to fix what he showcased. I'm sure Steam's written like any other piece of software and its stated that hacking is wrong, and thus his banning was just part of protocol, but context and purpose can sometimes put the supposed sturdiness of protocol to a test of morale.

My knowledge of networking is not solid and for that I cannot know if his hacking of the system would leave it vulnerable to subsequent attacks from other parties, but in the event it didn't, I really can't understand why Valve would want to punish him for what was meant to be his (rather extreme) attempt to raise awareness of an issue.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

If you and anyone else could break into a bank would you do so just to prove it can be done?

And Valve needs to pay more attention. If a game developer responsible for making my company a shit ton of money was trying to tell me something important, I'd damn well listen to him.

Stupid people.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

They didn't ban him for "pointing out a vulnerability", they banned him for hacking the motherfucking system.

While true, it's still counterproductive. This guy had no malicious intent from what it looks like. Hope in this year of his suspension they contact him and work with him to resolve the vulnerability, at least, if the ban doesn't get reversed.

It's like disabling a house's alarm system and vandalizing it "just" to show the owner that you and possibly someone else could. I guess I'll go get a better alarm then but it's still illegal and you're still going down.

You ever see "It Takes A Thief"? Those guys tore up houses to show people just how vulnerable their places were. This is the same scenario, except that he told them repeatedly about it, they did nothing then did something innocuous to prove that there was a fault before it could actually be taken advantage of. No one asked him to do this he did it to it wouldn't get out of hand. The guy doesn't deserve to be banned, he should be commended for finding it before it got out of hand and word spread of the fault to those with less altruistic natures.

Ends and means: don't attack me because it's gonna make me stronger.

 

[DoPo]

but still stealing money, hell even if they didnt theyd still be violating private property wouldnt they?

he still took advantage of the exploit

How did he take advantage of the exploit? He used it simply to show of the exploit itself.

Which is, in fact, taking advantage of the exploit.

If he had used the exploit to hack a thousand users bank accounts and show that to Valve, THAT would have been taking advantage of the exploit.

Using an exploit is using an exploit, not "using an exploit for something I personally consider to be wrong". What if he didn't "hack a thousand users bank accounts" (how do you even do that with XSS?). What if there was an exploit in JS which allows him access to the user's clipboard, would you consider that OK? What if he loaded an image in the user's browser which comes from a separate server? What if he messed with the age of the user[footnote]when a game needs to know your age, that's just stored in a cookie - you can go and see it, if you wish - it's called birthtime[/footnote] - If you say that's OK, then you definitely don't have a say in what is OK or not.

Whether you think these actions are harmless or not is irrelevant, as they are actually all potential attack vectors. As is XSS. Exploiting XSS is...again, exploiting XSS. It is covered under the Steam Online Conduct and as such I don't understand why you are going "doing something illegal is NOT illegal if I say so".

 

[Geo Da Sponge]

I'd rather see someone use a highly noticable and harmless script to scare Valve who are ignoring the issue, than a malicious thief infect Steam without anyone noticing until it is too late.

Guess we disagree then, @NuclearKangaroo

Or, here's a much better idea, get in touch with a journalist and make gamers themselves aware of the exploit and drum up a storm of controversy until Valve fixes it.

And again, the problem with that is that you're making lots and lots of people aware of a vulnerability in Steam's design. And they have to at least have some kind of vague idea about what the problem is, or else how does it go? "Steam, fix this problem! We don't know where it is or what it is, but we want it fixed!" Plus I really, really don't like the idea that Valve will only bother to fix their security isues if they become public knowledge!

That is in no way a good idea, it's just the only option you have if you rule out A) Valve letting a developer contact them and responding promptly like a decent company should and B) Them actually responding nicely to the person who's repeatedly tried to contact them about a security issue and has even gone so far as to demonstrate it in a nice, safe way (come to think of it, how can he actually prove that there's a problem there unless he uses it?)

 

[pearcinator]

Get your act together Valve! I am getting tired of your shit.

 

[Something Amyss]

seriously tough, the guy broke the rules, you dont give him a cookie just because he proved he could

That's what big evil Microsoft did, though. That was kind of the point of the statement. It's just funny that the "good guys" are more willing to punish someone than the "bad guys." It's funnier that they'd rather punish the guy exposing the exploit than actually deal with it. And honestly? It doesn't matter what Lawful Evil excuse people make for it--it's still funny.

the guy NEEDED to exhaust all the other alternative before to this

Such as? Can you demonstrate he did or didn't try them?

 

[wAriot]

For the people saying "those are the rules": you are completely right.
But Valve isn't controlled by robots (as far as I know, anyway). This guy isn't a vigilante, he didn't kill or steal anything. Anyone with a minimal amount of empathy would understand that he doesn't deserve a ban, even if the rules say otherwise.

 

[SexyGarfield]

Using an exploit is using an exploit, not "using an exploit for something I personally consider to be wrong". What if he didn't "hack a thousand users bank accounts" (how do you even do that with XSS?). What if there was an exploit in JS which allows him access to the user's clipboard, would you consider that OK? What if he loaded an image in the user's browser which comes from a separate server? What if he messed with the age of the user - If you say that's OK, then you definitely don't have a say in what is OK or not.

Whether you think these actions are harmless or not is irrelevant, as they are actually all potential attack vectors. As is XSS. Exploiting XSS is...again, exploiting XSS. It is covered under the Steam Online Conduct and as such I don't understand why you are going "doing something illegal is NOT illegal if I say so".

What if someone else exploited this vulnerability doing all those things? It seems like you are making an argument for Tomá? Duda doing exactly what he did. The vulnerability is fixed because of his actions and those hypothetical scenarios you mentioned where steam users become victims to bad actors can't happen. Show me what harm has been done.

 

[DoPo]

It seems like you are making an argument for Tomá? Duda doing exactly what he did.

No, I am not. What he did was obviously wrong and two wrongs don't make it right, as we know. If he wanted to do it properly, he could have done it properly - there are procedures that must be followed when doing pentesting. Seeing as the guy is a game developer rather than a pentester, and his only gig as one ended up with him doing not what a pentester should do at all, I'd hazard a guess he's not a really good pentester and maybe he should work on his skills there.

Show me what harm has been done.

Erm, you don't really get it, do you. What that guy did was illegal. And against the contract he has with Valve. That's it. Whether it resulted in people being harmed or not is irrelevant. If somebody walks around with picklocks in the UK without a license to use them, they are also breaking the law. Would you then claim that they didn't actually do any harm, therefore they weren't breaking the law? What of private property, then - if anybody walks in a random home, without harming anybody or anything, then it's fine? And if so, how far does this extend? If somebody attempted murder but the victim lived - hey, no harm done, right? Or do we stick to the rules as we've agreed to follow them. The laws are implicitly to be followed, of course, but the contract Mr Duda, as well as all Steam users, have with Steam forbids the behaviour displayed by Mr. Duda. Is he not liable for breach of contract? When would he be liable - when you feel like it or when he actually breaches it?

 

[KungFuJazzHands]

Besides Valve and their grovelling fanboys, who gives a mighty fuck whether what Timmy did was forbidden by his contractual obligations with the company? How long should he have continued to try going through the proper (and apparently ineffective) channels before someone with a more malicious bent found the exploit on their own and wreaked some major havoc? What's important here is that the guy finally got Valve's undivided attention, and now they're going to be forced to fix the exploit or look even more incompetent than they usually do.

I'm hoping someone at Valve eventually sees common sense and reverses this poor guy's ban. He really did them a favor, after all. Then again, he also embarrassed them publicly, so maybe a ban reversal is too much to ask for from a company that has a history of downplaying or outright censoring those who make these kinds of controversies known to the Steam community.

 

[SexyGarfield]

It seems like you are making an argument for Tomá? Duda doing exactly what he did.

No, I am not. What he did was obviously wrong and two wrongs don't make it right, as we know. If he wanted to do it properly, he could have done it properly - there are procedures that must be followed when doing pentesting. Seeing as the guy is a game developer rather than a pentester, and his only gig as one ended up with him doing not what a pentester should do at all, I'd hazard a guess he's not a really good pentester and maybe he should work on his skills there.

Show me what harm has been done.

Erm, you don't really get it, do you. What that guy did was illegal. And against the contract he has with Valve. That's it. Whether it resulted in people being harmed or not is irrelevant. If somebody walks around with picklocks in the UK without a license to use them, they are also breaking the law. Would you then claim that they didn't actually do any harm, therefore they weren't breaking the law? What of private property, then - if anybody walks in a random home, without harming anybody or anything, then it's fine? And if so, how far does this extend? If somebody attempted murder but the victim lived - hey, no harm done, right? Or do we stick to the rules as we've agreed to follow them. The laws are implicitly to be followed, of course, but the contract Mr Duda, as well as all Steam users, have with Steam forbids the behaviour displayed by Mr. Duda. Is he not liable for breach of contract? When would he be liable - when you feel like it or when he actually breaches it?

The victims in the hypotheticals you mention above have not benefited from the acts you've paired them with. A more accurate analogy is someone breaking into a water treatment plant to pull a dead animal out of an open reservoir or trespassing onto property they smelt as gas leak from to turn off the gas line (after knocking to no avail [aka trying to contact steam to tell them to fix yo shit]).

The examples above are still removed from his actions and exaggerated like yours in the sense that they compare Duda to criminals. After all, what law has he broken? Keep in mind that as a citizen of the Czech Republic the computer fraud and abuse act that makes violation of a simple terms of service agreement a criminal act does not apply to him. Does steam have the right to ban him for violating their terms of service? Yes. Does exercising your rights always make you right? Nope.[footnote]

Spoiler

[/footnote] Discretion can be applied here as it can be with all matters, legal or otherwise.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

Remember when Steam was heralded as the "saviour of PC gaming?" Yeah me neither. Valve has used up all of their goodwill over the last two year as far as i'm concerned.

Two Years? They've been like this for the longest time, hell they're responsible for almost every anti-consumer precadent in gaming. They were just good at PR.

Ah hell, i'm relatively new to this whole PC gaming thing, I thought they were still decent for awhile. I only started seriously just over a year ago, before then Steam was just window dressing for Team Fortress 2. My first real experience of how broken it is was when my one friend had his account frozen cuz of Paypal problems, y'know you use too much money in one transfer so banks and similar just have to stick their head in. A problem that Paypal itself had sorted out a week or so after the incident, meanwhile his Steam account that he had the same Paypal connected to it was frozen for roundabout 3/4 months investigating (and I use that word in the loosest possible way) the same problem and he had to go through the hell of ringing up the Steam complaints/support line several times.

Did I mention illegal in the UK yet? I don't understand how anyone can attempt to defend Steam when that's a clear fact (Sale of Goods Act 1994, give it a quick runover if you're that bored) Cuz Steam's customer support and refund policy is just that god awful. I can't stress this enough, their way of running customer service is illegal. "Nah man" they still say, "Valve is perfectly fine, saviour of PC gaming" Valve doesn't listen to petty things like "laws" though right? Hell they can't even listen to their own customers. They've got more hats to design.

ok

valve violates the law, and its bad

this guy violates a contract, and is good

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

but still stealing money, hell even if they didnt theyd still be violating private property wouldnt they?

he still took advantage of the exploit

How did he take advantage of the exploit? He used it simply to show of the exploit itself.
If he had used the exploit to hack a thousand users bank accounts and show that to Valve, THAT would have been taking advantage of the exploit.

the broke the rules of the steam subscriber agreement

 

[zehydra]

The reason he was banned wasn't for pointing out the vulnerability, but for taking advantage of it.

 

[Brownie80]

They didn't ban him for "pointing out a vulnerability", they banned him for hacking the motherfucking system.

While true, it's still counterproductive. This guy had no malicious intent from what it looks like. Hope in this year of his suspension they contact him and work with him to resolve the vulnerability, at least, if the ban doesn't get reversed.

It's like disabling a house's alarm system and vandalizing it "just" to show the owner that you and possibly someone else could. I guess I'll go get a better alarm then but it's still illegal and you're still going down.

You ever see "It Takes A Thief"? Those guys tore up houses to show people just how vulnerable their places were. This is the same scenario, except that he told them repeatedly about it, they did nothing then did something innocuous to prove that there was a fault before it could actually be taken advantage of. No one asked him to do this he did it to it wouldn't get out of hand. The guy doesn't deserve to be banned, he should be commended for finding it before it got out of hand and word spread of the fault to those with less altruistic natures.

Ends and means: don't attack me because it's gonna make me stronger.

This isn't a game this is Valve. These are the people that run STEAM. That service is a lifeline for some people and pointing out a major vulnerability is something that a lot of those people and Valve themselves should be looking for intently.

 

[NuclearKangaroo]

seriously tough, the guy broke the rules, you dont give him a cookie just because he proved he could

That's what big evil Microsoft did, though. That was kind of the point of the statement. It's just funny that the "good guys" are more willing to punish someone than the "bad guys." It's funnier that they'd rather punish the guy exposing the exploit than actually deal with it. And honestly? It doesn't matter what Lawful Evil excuse people make for it--it's still funny.

the guy NEEDED to exhaust all the other alternative before to this

Such as? Can you demonstrate he did or didn't try them?

so far, the story ive heard, is that the send some emails and tweets to valve over the course of months, but he could

- go to a gaming site, with evidence (tough obviously no specifics) about the exploit
- contact other trustworthly devs and try to get together valve's attention
- use his fairly popular game to reach out to a lot of people and get valve's attention

im not defending at any point valve obliviousness, but this guy in the end broke the rules he agreed to abide to, 2 wrongs dont make one right, and while his demostration was in the end harmless, can you imagine if every person who found exploits also made these harmless demostrations? it can end up annoying the end users

im not convinced this guy exhausted all the alternatives, if that had happened, sure i could get behind this

 

[klaynexas3]

To all the people using this as an excuse to bash on Valve/Steam, remember that "contacting Valve" about the vunerability was literally just he tweeted about it once, and sent them an email. A company that likely gets hundreds of thousands of emails a week.

In fairness, I'm just pointing out the double standard possibly at play here.

Anyone that believes Sony had no right to be mad at Hotz is chugging sawdust, but they went far with what all they did. Banning the guy for a year, however(and just his personal account, he can still make updates to his game) seems maybe a little long, but still hardly outside the realm of fair. The reasons are not the problem in the double standard, it's the reaction.