Thursday, November 10th 2011
Steam Hack More Severe Than Thought: Change Your Password NOW
Gabe Newell of Valve has issued a statement that the forum hack they experienced over the weekend actually goes much deeper than they thought. The criminals accessed the main database containing such goodies as user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. Apparently, no personally identifying information was taken - but we await the result of the full investigation before breathing a sigh of relief. Due to this serious breach, TechPowerUp advises all Steam users to change their account password immediately. People starting up their Steam client will now see the following message from Gabe Newell about this:
10 November 2011
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.
127 Comments on Steam Hack More Severe Than Thought: Change Your Password NOW
Any information that you give them when signing up plus any thing you use to buy though them is personal or this be a total none issue.
My card is in crappy condition and I never changed it with the PSN hack. Now it's a great time to get a new card
And was the database mysql?
I bet it was EA! lol
(Hell they are lucky it wasn't Origin (yet) which may have even been easier. Speaking of which I need to change that pass too).
Looks like 2011 is gunna be the year of the hacker, so many high profile companies have been hit this year, it's kinda scary to think about.
But I do like the steam system where in if a new system tries to log into your account, you need to enter an email confirmation number. Luckily I use different passwords for steam and my email. You can never have too many passwords it seems!
I love politically incorrect posts... :DTwo ways: run the Steam client and go to settings. That's one password. Then go to www.steampowered.com and click on Support. Log in there. That's a different login - I think it's the same as the forum one, but don't hold me to it - and change the password there.
I've now changed, both of course. I did it before posting up that article, in fact.
You have a cool username bro, Unreal Tournament rocks like nothing else. :rockout:
Welcome to TPU. :toast:
Go here if you forgot your password and your secret question,Just make damn sure you give all the right info,Also take a photo of you retail cd key or show them a receipt from an game purchase.support.steampowered.com/kb_cat.php?id=3
I'm mad...
EDIT: remember to change you password AND security question
"Unable to connect to the steam network. 'Offline Mode' is unavailable because there is no Steam login information stored on this computer. You will not be able to use steam until you are able to connect to the Steam network again"
what should I do?
If not, I reckon just trying every so often will eventually let you in.