Steam User Database Hacked, No Evidence Of Stolen Personal Information

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Well, here we go again. Earlier this week, the Steam user forums were hacked. At first, it seemed like a relatively harmless attack, with the hackers merely hijacking the Steam forums and placing ads for their hacking services up on the forum’s pages. Valve announced today that the rabbit hole goes a bit deeper than that, however, because the Steam user database was also hacked as part of the attacks.

Valve says that there isn’t any evidence that personal information was stolen at the moment, but to us, it seems like the chances are pretty good. After all, user names, “hashed and salted” passwords, purchase history, email addresses, billing addresses, and encrypted credit card information are all stored on the Steam user database, so hackers could have potentially made off with all that information.

Once the Steam forums are restored, returning users will be required to change their passwords. Valve isn’t requiring that people change their Steam login information, but if you use the same user name and password for Steam and the Steam forums, you should really get on changing that password. Likewise, it should be pretty obvious that if you use the same login information across all of your online identities, you should probably change those passwords too. Monitor those bank account statements too, and be sure to alert your banking institution right away if you see any transactions you didn’t make.

Valve boss Gabe Newell has sent out a letter to all Steam users, but in case you haven’t received it yet, here it is in full:

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.

Keep it tuned right here to TFTS – we’ll have more information on these Steam user database hackings as it is made available.