Steam forums hack

Nov 7, 2011

The official steam user forums might have been hacked. This news is spreading around the internet, with multiple sources claiming to have seen redirects to another website. This website in question denies involvement though. There is no official reply from VALVe yet, but  the forums are down for maintenance at the time of writing. There are no signs that passwords have been compromised. Although, we as a community suggest that you change the password of your email and steam account if you were using the same one on the forums. It’s advisable to always have a strong and unique password for critical accounts like your email and Steam. Also we advise you to use a different password for random registrations like forums and websites.

We will add to this when we have more news about what is going on. So stay tuned.

-UPDATE 1-

It seams that the database/server has not been hacked itself. Instead an admin account. The account that has possibly been compromised is that of John McCaskey.

There are sources stating that John McCaskey’s job is security and exploits. Although, the official website states he was working on the shopping cart and ingame overlay.

We have also found out that there were email sent out to some users. If you come accross one of these emails DO NOT open it. However, if you do open it and it has a description of a site trash it. Certainly trash the email if it says “Thanks again, the fkn0wned team”. (The 0 in owned is a zero.)

-UPDATE 2-

I tried to access the forums today 12/11/2011 and it worked. As far as I know the forums are back up. I do not know for how long though (Lets hope it is permanent)