Report: Steam Forums Down, Possibly Hacked

November 7, 2011 -

The Steam forums are offline, with a message to visitors declaring that they are undergoing maintenance, but some users are telling Eurogamer that the forums may have suffered a security breach. Currently the forums are displaying the following message:

"The Steam Forums are temporarily offline for maintenance," a message on Steampowered reads. "Your patience is appreciated."

Eurogamer received an email from one Steam user who said a group changed the text on the forum and spammed some users' email addresses. The group is reportedly from FknOwned.com, a website that offers video game hacks, porn, etc. The group managed to deface the forums and some users reported receiving emails from Steampowered.com with the following message:

"Ever wanted to dominate the servers you play on with guaranteed results, but you were too afraid to cheat because of ban risks? Visit [removed domain] It's safe, secure and undetected."

"Along with hacks, we've also got some general discussion sections, hacking tutorials and tools, porn, free giveaways and much more. This site has been conditioned to meet all your needs in terms of resources so be sure to take a look and tell us what you think."

"Thanks again, the fkn0wned team."

No one has claimed that user data has been compromised or that any Steam accounts have been breached. Valve has not publicly commented on this story.

Source: Eurogamer

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Comments

Re: Report: Steam Forums Down, Possibly Hacked

Submitted by djnforce9 on Wed, 11/09/2011 - 08:25.

Thankfully the Steam forums use the vBulletin forum software which encrypts account passwords (using md5 with salt) in the database (I know since I've set up vBulletin forums before). This makes it absolutely impossible to decrypt them back into plain text again (the wonders of trap-door cryptography).

The hackers could on the hand change people's forum (not Steam) passwords if they broke into the Admin Panel but that wouldn't accomplish anything useful. The worst it seems they've done is collected a huge list of user e-mails to spam and that's about it. Hopefully Valve can just roll back to the latest backup and things will work once again. I guess it depends on how the intruders broke in (phished an admin, found an exploit, etc) which determines how long it will take to prevent future incidents.

Shout box

Neo_DrKefka: That is correct in an At-Will state you or the employer can part ways at any time. However Florida also has laws on the books about "Wrongful combinations against workers" http://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2012/448.04510/20/2014 - 10:07am

james_fudge: he'd die if he couldn't talk about Wii U :)10/20/2014 - 9:16am

Michael Chandra: By the way, I am not saying Andrew should stop talking about Wii-U. I find it quite nice. :)10/20/2014 - 8:53am

Michael Chandra: 'How dare he ignore my wishes and my advice! I am his boss! I could have ordered him but I should be able to say it's advice rather than ordering him directly!'10/20/2014 - 8:52am

Michael Chandra: If GP goes "EZK, do not talk about X publicly for a week, we're preparing a big article on it" and he still tweets about X, they'd have a legitimate reason to be pissed.10/20/2014 - 8:52am

Michael Chandra: If GP tells Andrew "we'd kinda prefer it if you stopped talking about Wii-U for 1 week" and he'd tweet about it anyway, firing him for it would be idiotic.10/20/2014 - 8:51am

Michael Chandra: Legal right, sure. But that doesn't make it any less pathetic of an excuse.10/20/2014 - 8:50am

ZippyDSMlee: You mean right to fire states.10/20/2014 - 8:50am

james_fudge: some states have "at will" employee laws10/20/2014 - 7:50am

quiknkold: It says in the article that being in florida, you can get fired regardless if its a fireable offence10/20/2014 - 7:19am

Michael Chandra: If your employee respectfully disagrees with your advice, that's not a fireable offense. If they ignore your order, THEN you have the right to be pissed.10/20/2014 - 6:49am

Michael Chandra: I... Don't get one thing. If you do not want your employee to do X, why do you tell them it's advice or a wish? Give them a damn order.10/20/2014 - 6:48am

james_fudge: A leak that had me worried about being swatted by Lizard Squad.10/20/2014 - 6:03am

james_fudge: It should be noted that the author leaked the GJP group names online10/20/2014 - 6:03am

MechaTama31: I mean, of the groups being bullied here, which of the two would you refer to collectively as "nerds"?10/19/2014 - 11:30pm

MechaTama31: But that's the thing, it doesn't sound to me like he is advocating bullying, it sounds like he is accusing the SJWs of bullying the "nerds", who I can only assume refers to the GGers.10/19/2014 - 11:21pm

Andrew Eisen: Interesting read. Unfortunately, too vague to form an opinion on but at least now I know what faefrost was talking about in James' editorial.10/19/2014 - 10:39pm

Neo_DrKefka: Breaking GameJournoPros organized a blacklist of former Destructoid writer Allistar Pinsof for investigating fraud in IndieGoGo campaign http://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2014/10/gamergate-destructoid-corruption-and-ruined-careers/10/19/2014 - 8:57pm

Neo_DrKefka: Only good thing I seen come out of the Biddle incident was the fact a professional fighter offered to give 10k to an anti bullying charity for a round in the ring with Biddle.10/19/2014 - 7:49pm

Neo_DrKefka: Even after all the interviews she is still on twitter making fun of people with disabilities (Autism) yet she is a part of the crowd that is on the so called right side of history...10/19/2014 - 7:48pm

All shouts

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