Security Breach at Valve Releases Steam Subscriber Information for 35 Million People
There was a security breach at one of the internet’s premiere video game retailers, Valve Corporation, also known as Steam, which disclosed subscriber information for up to 35 million customers. This is about on the level with Sony’s security breach earlier this year: http://www.databreaches.net/?p=21478
This comes on the heels of 2 of the biggest video game releases in 2011, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Both released and distributed by Steam shortly before this announcement, the potential impact could be even greater than just their advertised 35 million subscribers.
A message was displayed to Steam customers once exiting whatever game they were playing or when they attempted to access the Steam forums yesterday:
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.
I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.
Gabe.
Related articles:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-10-valve-confirms-steam-security-breach
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/11/11/steam-goes-public-on-data-breach-but-will-it-delay-the-launch-of-skyrim/
http://www.techspot.com/news/46158-steam-forums-shut-down-due-to-security-breach.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15690187
