Valve has added extra security measures for developer accounts on Steam after hackers updated several games with malware.
While the attack was quickly contained, the affected games belonged to fewer than 100 players, and those players were immediately emailed by Valve alerting them to the attack. According to PC Gamer, the company has started offering new two-factor authentication methods for developer accounts on Steam in order to prevent similar and more terrible attacks from occurring.
Although the number of affected users being less than 100 does not sound very serious, those affected may evaluate this differently. Benoît Freslon, the developer of the game NanoWar: Cells VS Virus, stated in his statement on Twitter that hackers took control of browser access tokens and thus gained access to all services he logged into.
These new security measures, which will likely go into effect on October 24, were not a temporary response to this latest malware attack. In its Steamworks post on the subject, Valve notes that developers will need a phone to receive text messages to bypass two-factor authentication.
This may be a bit annoying for developers who don’t want to use their phones for business purposes, but it’s absolutely necessary to prevent similar attacks that could affect some of the best Steam games in the future. Especially if what Valve says about the increase in malware attacks is true…
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