drag2share: This Online Gaming Service Got Hacked And 35 Million People Are Affected

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/steam-hacked-2011-11

Steam, an Internet gaming service, was compromised by hackers this past Sunday, reports the BBC.

The service boasts 35 million users, which makes this an especially serious exposure of data -- the hackers illegitimately accessed a database containing credit card info and users' personal information, such as billing addresses, passwords, and purchase history.

Valve, the company that owns and operates Steam, issued a statement saying that it saw no indications that the exposed credit cards were being used illegitimately.

Valve co-founder Gabe Newell issued the following statement on the Steam Forums:

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.

 

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See Also:

• Mark Zuckerberg: "I'm Pretty Sure We're Not Going To Build Any Games"
• SHOCKING PENN STATE RUMOR: Jerry Sandusky 'Pimped Out Young Boys To Rich Donors'
• This 28-Year-Old's Startup Is Moving $350 Million And Wants To Completely Kill Credit Cards

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