The employee, Paul Ashley, pleaded guilty to the attacks and has already served a two-year prison term, while Echouafni skipped out on $750,000 bail and is now believed to be hiding out in Morocco, where he was born.The Septembuild of Half-Life 2 was compiled more than a year before the game's release. And last month federal prosecutors in Los Angeles added him to an old case involving Jay Echouafni, 41, an online satellite TV retailer who allegedly paid an employee to organize crippling distributed denial-of-service attacks against competing websites in 2003. The feds haven't forgotten Gembe, however. He was ultimately charged in Germany, where he was sentenced to probation. Perhaps sensing that his relocation expenses would be shouldered by U.S. for a job interview, where they were arrested. The same Seattle FBI office had successfully used an identical gambit in 2001, when they created a fake startup company called Invita, and lured two known Russian hackers to the U.S.
"We pay for all interview related expenses (travel, hotel, food, etc.) as well as relocation expenses (pretty standard for the game business)." Newell passed the resume along to the feds, then invited Gembe to travel to Seattle for a follow-up interview in person. "I'm no bad guy, just a little misguided."
"Well, I really hope you hire me," he wrote. Gembe detailed how he'd cracked the company's network, first entering through an account that had no password, then ramping up to root access using remote CGI exploits and scanning software.Īfter the interview, the then-21-year-old Gembe sent the company his résumé. In March, several Valve managers staged a 40-minute "job interview' with DaGuy over the phone, in which the hacker confirmed that he was Gembe. From clues in the e-mail, the FBI identified the aspiring employee as Axel Gembe, of Schonau, Germany. Coordinating with the FBI in Seattle, Valve began a correspondence with DaGuy, who expressed interest in getting a job with the company.
0 kommentar(er)
