Vavle's Steam Forums and Database Hacked

Valve's Steam forums and database hacked! Watch your credit card! The company is investigating possible credit card misuse.

It turns out that the recent Steam forum breach is more serious than originally thought. Head of Valve Gabe Newell issued a statement today apologizing for the inconvenience and confirming that, along with the forums, the Steam database had been compromised.


On Sunday, November 6, the Steam forums were defaced by what appeared to be a hacking website called Fknowned.com. The forums were plastered with the hacking website’s name and offers for “tutorials, tools, porn, free giveaways and much more.” According to Kotaku, some users reported receiving spam from Fknowned.com shortly after the attack. Valve subsequently took the forums offline; however, the Fknowned team denied responsibility for the breach in a statement on their site, claiming the job was a set-up.

It would be all fine if the incident stayed within the user forums, which has a separate password from the service, but Newell confirmed that the issue has spread to the Steam database. The database contains fun stuff such as usernames, passwords, game purchases, billing address and of course encrypted credit card information.

Newell says: “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.”

He continues by saying that Valve doesn’t have any evidence of credit card misuse yet, but users should take precautions and watch statements closely. Though only a few forum accounts have been compromised so far, all forum users will need to provide new passwords next time they log in. No actual Steam accounts have been compromised yet so Newell says there won’t be any forced password changes.

Some of you may be feeling a little déjà vu, but hopefully this breech doesn’t get as bad as Sony’s. Nevertheless, make sure you watch your statements, and change all your passwords; especially if you use the same one for multiple services.

Valve's Steam gaming forums were apparently defaced this past weekend and the company is investigating whether the intruders who broke into the digital distribution network made off with Steam users' credit card numbers and personally identifying information, according to a message sent to customers.

Here's the full text of a message addressed "Steam Users and Steam Forum Users" that Valve's Gabe Newell posted on the company's Web site:

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.

Valve did not immediately respond to a request for more information. PCMag also contacted Newell directly and has yet to hear back from him.


*Source PCMag