'With the introduction of cosmetic items (which for some insane reason can be worth thousands of dollars) and the market for users to trade, there is now finally a juicy target for attackers to look at,' Bower continued.

Regardless, people still trade them for cash on dedicated sites. These items are purely for decoration, and don't affect game play. Many games on Steam allow players to purchase additional items. 'Stealing someone's account no longer means that you just have access to their games.' 'The biggest change that happened was the introduction of a trading platform around 2009,' Bower told said over encrypted chat.

One hacking tutorial I found that was apparently written in 2006 sketches out how to take over Steam accounts using a variety of established methods, including stealing a user's credentials with a fake log-in page.īut things started to ramp up when real money got involved. Allen will be presenting on malware targeting Steam users at Defcon in August, along with information security engineer Rusty Bower. 'The lower the ID, the more your account was worth to the community,' Zack Allen, lead research engineer at security company ZeroFox said. In the early days, a Steam account's value to hackers was typically based on how many games it had or the length of Steam ID associated with it (a unique set of digits that indicates when the account was made). This means that if the user buys a new PC, all they need to do is download their collection again. When users purchase games through the software, these are linked to their account. Steam, a service launched by Valve Corporation in 2003, acts as a hub for people to download games and socialise with friends.

How to crack steam accounts with money