Several days ago, reports emerged of a potentially enormous data breach concerning more than 89 million Steam accounts. The hacker in question claimed to be in possession of internal vendor data and more, highlighting the alleged severity of their hack. While this sounds concerning, Valve has thankfully dismissed the legitimacy of this threat.
In a Steam Community blog post, Valve acknowledges that a leak relevant to Steam has occurred. However, the company categorically denies that any systems relating to its storefront. In its statement, the brand explicitly says: “The leaked data did not associate the phone numbers with a Steam account, password information, payment information or other personal data.”
Valve explains that the leak consists of old SMS sent to Steam customers, serving as a means of two-factor authentication. These text messages don’t provide insight into what Steam account a phone number is associated with, nor are they valid beyond a small timeframe of a few minutes.
Investigations into the source of this leak remain ongoing at Valve, but there’s no need to change your password or phone numbers in the wake of this leak. All the same, if you haven’t changed the former in a long while then there’s no time like the present to tighten up your account’s security.
For those continuing to use SMS 2FA for their Steam account, I’d strongly urge you to make the switch to the Steam Mobile Authenticator instead. Not only is it a more secure means of authentication, thanks to encryption, it also makes for a convenient way to log in to devices like your Steam Deck via QR code scans.
If you’re concerned about the integrity of your Steam account’s security, you can always check what devices have access to it via the ‘Authorized Devices’ page. Better still, you can wipe the slate clean and remove all credentials at the click of a button.
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