Valve, the company that owns Steam, the world’s largest digital distribution platform for PC games has confirmed that its systems weren’t breached.
The statement comes after a dark web monitoring group called Underdark.ai posted on LinkedIn that a threat actor going by the name Machine1337 was offering to sell user records of more than 89 million Steam users for just $5,000. The threat actor added that they had some “sample data” as proof and shared a Telegram number to see if anyone was interested in purchasing them.
Unsurprisingly, this caused a lot of panic amongst Steam users, following which numerous communities and publications advised Steam users to change their passwords and enable two-factor authentication for security purposes.
In a blog post, Valve has now issued a statement and clarified that the “leak consisted of older text messages that included one-time codes that were only valid for 15-minute time frames and the phone numbers they were sent to.
The leaked data did not associate the phone numbers with any Steam account nor did it contain any passwords, payment information or any other personally identifiable data. Valve also said that these old messages cannot be used to hack any Steam accounts and that users will receive a code whenever they try to change their email or password using SMS.
In a recent report, Bleeping Computer claims that when they examined some of the leaked files that contained around 3,000 records, they found that some of the records are relatively new, with some messages dating to March.
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Valve also said that Steam users have no need to panic and that they do not need to change your passwords or phone numbers. The company also recommended users to set up the Steam Mobile Authenticator app as it enhances account safety.
For those wondering where the leak originated from, Valve says that it wasn’t a Steam leak. However, Underdark.ai claims that the leaked data came from the cloud communications company Twilio, which may be handling the 2FA codes for Steam.
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