Steam gets hacked – Gabe Newell offers free game as compensation?
Earlier this week Valve issued a statement regarding a hacking incident on its forums. It appears that this may have been a prelude to a bigger attack against Steam and its member data.
Valve boss, Gabe Newell issued a statement recently revealing that the earlier reports of hacking on the forums go beyond it. According to Newell, hackers were able to gain entry into Steam’s database that holds “user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information.”
Newell clearly states that there has been no evidence that the hackers took the credit card information. He also stated that there are no reports of credit card misuse at this time and advises users to keep an eye on their statements.
He stated that users will not be forced to change their Steam passwords but is recommended. However, forum passwords will have to be changed.
According to an email response from Newell that has been floating around the Web, Valve may be looking to compensate members with a free copy of DOTA 2 and Portal 2. This has not been confirmed with an official statement, but it sure would be a nice gesture if true.
Full statement below:
Yesterday, on November 10, 2011, the following message was sent to all users via a Steam 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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6 Responses to “Steam gets hacked – Gabe Newell offers free game as compensation?”
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November 12th, 2011
Damn…
November 13th, 2011
I don’t use steam. My daughter is bugging me to buy portal 2 though.
November 13th, 2011
I do have an account from playing half life 2 but never but a card in it.
November 13th, 2011
First Sony, now Steam.
Wonder who’s next.
November 13th, 2011
let’s see….
Don’t remember them all, but Bethesda, EA, Ubisoft, and others have all been hacked within the last year. Unfortunately it comes with the territory.
November 14th, 2011
They should track these arseholes down and shoot them.