Valve has confirmed that the hacking of its popular Steam service may have compromised credit card numbers and other personal information.

Defaced video on Steam's forums highlighted that there had been a breach, and further investigation by Valve has suggested that a database was also targeted.

The news that Steam had been targeted did not come as a major surprise given that high profile gaming institutions like Codemasters and, most famously, Sony's PSN have been hit in the past.

Valve's Gabe Newell confirmed that the attack may have compromised data, in an attack that saw Steam's forums taken offline.

Defaced

Newell's open letter to users said: "Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, 6 November. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.

"We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums.

"This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information.

"We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.

"We don't have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.

"While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.

"We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn't be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.

"We will reopen the forums as soon as we can. I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologise for the inconvenience."

It's becoming increasingly clear that private data on company databases, often including credit card details, is not as safe as we'd like it to be – with high-profile attacks coming thick and fast.

Via Ars Technica