Steam Suffers Christmas Day Security Issues

Technical glitch or malicious hack? Users are reporting they have access to other people’s credit card details and account information

Valve’s PC gaming platform Steam is currently undergoing a major security issue, logging users into other people’s accounts – seemingly at random.

Users are being given access to game libraries, credit card details, and purchase history of other users, just by attempting to access their own account details.

Hack?

It is not clear at this stage whether Steam is suffering a major technical hitch or there is some malicious element to the flaw.

Twitter is rife with reports of the glitch. TechWeekEurope tried to access its own account and found it had access to another user’s account with the ability to view their credit card details, email address and purchases.

steam
Popular infosec parody account @Securitay claims Steam is now offline

However, the glitch does follow threats from a hacking collective called SkidNP who warned that they would take down Minecraft and Steam servers some time over Christmas. A member of SkidNP told TechWorm just five days ago that the group “will be attacking Steam and Minecraft servers” to expose security issues over Christmas.

“We attack services to make them know what attacks are like so they can fix them,” the member, who runs the Twitter account @Obstructable said.

Some users attempting to access the Steam client are being faced with a message claiming that there are connection issues with the Steam network.

@Obstructable alluding to a Steam attack earlier today
@Obstructable alluding to a Steam attack earlier today

TechWeekEurope will update this story as more details become availiable, but for now, it has taken its own credit card details offline.

Update:

Steam has now almost certainly ‘pulled the plug’ with a vast majority of affected users on Twitter and Reddit claiming they can no longer access Steam.

Access from a web browser to the Steam website also results in an error. There are also reports of the PlayStation Network having issues at this time.