The world’s largest PC gaming platform, Steam, had to close its service due to a hacking of its platform in which the user accounts security was compromised.
Steam is used by large and small companies to distribute their video games throughout the world. It also provides an integrated communication platform for all the players.
Thanks to its great success, Steam has been carried to practically all operating systems, so there are more developers that are encouraged to produce multiplatform games. However, every system has a “but”.
Steam works very well, but its safety has been questioned for a serious security flaw that has left thousands of vulnerable accounts from the players.
A problem with the cache gave users access to random Steam accounts. This included email addresses, physical addresses, user names, buying history, wish lists, wallet balances and other private information associated with the account.
Some users reported the impossibility to make any changes to their accounts information – which randomly changes with each update of the page-, nor could they access their account to remove the personal information, and no purchases could be made at the time of writing.
Although the owners have not made any official statement on the issue, several users reported that only a “lucky few” accounts were affected.
Community manager on Reddit Steam informed users that the team was aware of the issue, so soon after knowing the problem, they closed the store and community sites.
The problem came after early in December a group of hackers, called ‘SkidNP’, threaten Steam and Minecraft servers, with the aim that companies become aware of their security and improve it, in order to not expose the private information of its users.
Source: My Broad Band