Follow-Up: Valve Hacker Arrested

[CSN NewsBot]

Wow, do you remember this story from over a year ago? A third-party site that handled Valve's Cyber Cafe information was hacked into by MaddoxX. Financial information was uncovered as was the means to easily create fake Cyber Cafe accounts, among other sensitive pieces of information.



MaddoxX claimed that he would never be caught as he "uses remote PCs to do [his] job." Too bad for him that his luck decided to run out.

A 20 year old hacker was arrested on Tuesday evening in the Dutch town of Maastricht, after the youngster had previously hacked himself into game developers Activision and Valve. The evildoer is being charged and questioned for downloading Activision's video game Enemy Territory: Quake War whilst it was still in development. Leaking the game would've led to estimated damages of 25 million US Dollars. Apart from hacking Activision, the hacker also broke into a third-party site used by Valve to handle the Cyber Café business partner program, which is part of the game distribution network Steam.[...]



As if illegally entering the virtual premises of two game developers weren't enough, Mr. MaddoxX is also being charged with stealing credit card data of 50.000 customers from an English tickets site. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the hacker managed to burn 13 million Euros playing poker online and shopping for notebooks, flat screens and MP3 players.



A crime unit of the Dutch police called Team High Tech Crime (THTC) was responsible for the bust.

To say that he's screwed is putting it mildly. His arrest surely came, in some part, by the efforts made by various developers and figures within the gaming community.



This story originally broke on April 18, 2007 with a large follow-up that came on the 19th of April. The original news story is in Dutch for those of you interested and able to read it. We also have a loose translation done by KillahInstinct of Steambans.com.

[EviLuoTioN]

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Had this guy pulled off the one heist and called it quits, it's entirely possible he wouldn't have gotten caught.



Burning millions of Euros playing online poker though? Did he seriously think that wouldn't raise any eyebrows or lead to any investigations? Pretty stupid. As much as I sympathize with MaddoxX's hatred of ads in CS1.6/CZ, the guy is a thief and I'm glad to see that he won't be causing any more damage. Only 20 and the rest of his life is pretty much gone now -- that has to suck.



Good riddance.

[Linux]

-:Nighthawk:- wrote..

Had this guy pulled off the one heist and called it quits, it's entirely possible he wouldn't have gotten caught.



Burning millions of Euros playing online poker though? Did he seriously think that wouldn't raise any eyebrows or lead to any investigations? Pretty stupid. As much as I sympathize with MaddoxX's hatred of ads in CS1.6/CZ, the guy is a thief and I'm glad to see that he won't be causing any more damage. Only 20 and the rest of his life is pretty much gone now -- that has to suck.



Good riddance.

What a moron... Some people are just dumb when they have too much money. Oh well at least another hacker is off the internet and into being a b$$$$ to some inmate, MUHAHAHA.

[pwnedbyIbanez]

pwned. noob.

[Diamond Dust]

The Dutch Police... Team High Tech Crime, thats not very scary. Sounds like a fake organization from a game. Good to see a low life hacker get busted.



I don't know about his life being gone, if he has any talent (I'm not sure as I don't know much about network securities) I do know some of these guys get lesser sentences and work for the government doing network security crap. Although I'm not sure if it's rare or common.

[nofukang]

Never really knew that hackers like him really existed beyond movies. Scary to see that he actually made a life for a few years that was close to a dream.

[Diamond Dust]

nofukang wrote..

Never really knew that hackers like him really existed beyond movies. Scary to see that he actually made a life for a few years that was close to a dream.

His life seems kinda sad to me. Spending all that time in front of a computer and not even getting away with it. Sounds like a horrible waste of time and talent.

[infil87]

"evildoer". Haha.

[sathanas]

Wow. You would think if he had access to all that money he would move to somewhere that doesn't care if he hacks. Like the moon.

[Sintra]

Fuck the moon, how about Hawai?

[Linux]

Sintra wrote..

Fuck the moon, how about Hawai?

How about San Diego? Oh wait, I'd know about him then. He should have bought his own island .