Steam forums and databases were both hacked earlier in the week. This happened on November 6th. The intruders gained a significant amount of personal information.
Steam admins advise everyone to change their password on their account. You should also change any e-mail that has the same password as your account. The intruders gained access to everything from names to encrypted passwords. Although data encryption technologies and devices (like the sky encrypted phone) are available, not everyone has the resources to leverage them. And so, even credit card information was stolen. However these may still be encrypted. It can depend on your credit card provider and their security though, you might be able to learn more about credit card security by looking at Credit Cards for International Students because they can often be targeted for theft so they can be a good example of a secure credit card.
Valve authorities are currently investigating whether any of the credit card info could have been decrypted. We should have more information on that in the following days. For now you should take all precautions to make sure that your account remains yours. This includes canceling cards. For anyone affected, conducting research on sites like websafetyadvice.com on how to improve your security, could be highly beneficial for the future.
But there are other problems as well that affect those who use credit cards. Many times, businesses like banks may themselves report incorrect information about the users to credit reporting agencies. This tends to lower people’s credit scores, which makes many consumers pay higher interest rates. However, with the assistance of any credit report lawyer in Denver or another location, such problems can be rectified by bringing a claim against the banks or other financial organizations. Unfortunately, database hacking can result in catastrophes, such as the loss and disclosure of cardholders’ personal information, among other things. And probably that’s what happened with Steam.
Here is the full list of stolen info includes:
- Names
- All passwords
- Game purchases
- E-mail addresses
- Billing addresses
- Encrypted credit card information
Here is Gabe’s apology: “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.”
This is a major problem for anyone involved with Steam. Hopefully the information will remain encrypted. We will be keeping an eye on this story.
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