Valve’s Steam network hacked, possible theft of credit card info

Gaming company Valve has discovered that a hacking attack on its Steam network compromised a database that contained credit card numbers and other personal info, reports Owen Good at Kotaku.

The hacking, which was aimed at defacing the Steam forums, occurred this sunday. Valve is now advising its users that they should keep an eye on any suspicious activity on their credit cards because of the intrusion. The forums are down while Valve works on the problem, but the network itself is still up.

The databases contents were “hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information,” said Gabe Newell of Valve. It’s definitely good news that these passwords and credit card numbers were not stored in plain text, but this isn’t an absolute guarantee of their safety.

Valve says that it has no evidence of misuse or that the encrypted information was even taken, just that it was in the same database that was hacked. The Steam account passwords are kept separately from the forum passwords, so there should be no reason to change your Steam account, but it wouldn’t hurt to do so.

Newell finished up his missive with the statement “”I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.”