An article about the theft of the Half Life 2 source code last year; an appeal to fans of the game helped Valve and the police to track down the hackers who gained access to Valve's network and remained undetected for months.
Gabe Newell (Valve CEO):
The second investigation was run by the gaming community. Fairly quickly after the source code was leaked, we sent out mail to the gaming community appealing for assistance in tracking down the perpetrators. We set up an email alias for people to submit information, and amassed thousands of pieces of evidence in a few days. That information was also redistributed within the community itself, as a smaller group took it upon itself to unmask the people. This non-traditional approach had the advantage of scale and of involving a large number of very sophisticated and motivated people.
Read the full articleDiscussion >>
