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.
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