Valve: Steam database compromised by hackers, customer details accessed

The breach over the Steam forums may have resulted in even more critical outcomes, according to Valve. The company’s online gaming portal have been targeted by a group of hackers, who reportedly compromised users’ personal details, including account info, passwords, emails and even encrypted credit card information.

The official message was issued on the site’s forums by Valve’s co-founder Gabe Newell, who confirmed the security breach, and stated that forum users are required to change their passwords the next time they login. Steam accounts, however, in the meantime can do without changing their password, although it is advised to do so.

Though, evidence of whether or not the intruders may have decrypted credit card info remains to be seen.

Here’s the full word from Newell.

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.