Valve confirms Steam hack: credit cards, personal info may be stolen

RC Cola · Nov 10, 2011

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...-credit-cards-personal-info-may-be-stolen.ars

The recent Steam hack may have compromised users' credit card numbers and other personal information, according to a message sent to Steam users from Gabe Newell, head of Valve. The company is certain the hackers gained access to a database with this encrypted information, but don't know if they took it or will be able to crack its encryption.

Earlier this week, the Steam forums were taken offline due to some vandalization by the video game hacks website fkn0wned. A message on the forums noted they were down for maintenance, but it turns they had received uninvited guests ealier after all.

The compromised database held information such as user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, e-mail addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information, according to Newell.

Newell writes that the company does not have evidence that the encrypted credit card numbers or personal info were taken by the intruders, and the company is "still investigating." He goes on to say that there is also no evidence of credit card misuse, but implores Steam users to "watch your credit card activity and statements closely."

The full text of his message:

Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users,

Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.

We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.

We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.

While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.

We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.

We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.

I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.

Gabe.
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wizkid83 · Nov 10, 2011

EA celebrates

TheRealist137 · Nov 10, 2011

Crap, considering almost all of the steam userbase has used credit cards to buy stuff on there, this could be a lot worse than the Sony stuff

RedRedemption · Nov 10, 2011

Well that's just ****ing fantastic.
Can't hackers just be content with pirating digital media?

AtheistPreacher · Nov 11, 2011

RedRedemption said: ↑

Well that's just ****ing fantastic.
Can't hackers just be content with pirating digital media?
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Seriously. It looks like Sony was only the first of many. This is crap.

DonnyMost · Nov 11, 2011

Ironic thing is Valve is one of the few companies that you'd think hackers wouldn't target. They're extremely user oriented and very generous as it is.

TreeRollins · Nov 11, 2011

DonnyMost said: ↑

Ironic thing is Valve is one of the few companies that you'd think hackers wouldn't target. They're extremely user oriented and very generous as it is.
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These guys might be more motivated by profit while groups like anonymous are more motivated by social causes

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Valve confirms Steam hack: credit cards, personal info may be stolen

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