Topic: Valve blackmail.

[Pugnate]

source (edit:no pun intended)

Half-Life hacker holds Valve to ransom

Steam tubes found leaking credit cards

By Wily Ferret: Thursday 19 April 2007, 09:00
Click here to find out more!
A DISGRUNTLED Half-Life gamer claims to have hacked Valve's Steam servers and is holding the company to ransom.

The chap, calling himself Maddox, says that he is not a fan of Steam - the digital distribution system for games that Valve has pioneered - and he's acting to get Valve to fix it to his satisfaction.

To prove his point, the hacker has released screenshots onto the web of Valve's internal admin system, along with details of user accounts and tips for people to set up their own 'CyberCafe' account with Valve, a privilege usually reserved for those running, well, CyberCafes.

The screenshots do seem to be legitimate, including listings of CyberCafe accounts, error logs and a small amount of credit card data with the numbers blanked out.

The man himself told the world that "If you [Valve] want me to remove these files you can e-mail me at (address removed) and I prefer you come with something good unless you want me to expose ALL of the customers their information."

He has further threatened to put together a spreadsheet of all Valve's user base credit card data and to release it into the hack-o-sphere, which wouldn't be a pleasant experience for the millions of Valve customers that have purchased games online.

Valve is yet to publicly respond to the threat - there is zip on its website, and we can't find anything in the support forums either - but we suspect that Gabe Newell and co are talking to the police as we type. µ

[TheOtherBelmont]

Hahaha Maddox from The Best Web Page in the Universe is probably getting tons of emails from people asking if its him.

[Pugnate]

haha that's what I was thinking...

*Maddox*: NO YOU BASTARDS FOR THE LAST TIME IT ISN'T ME!!!! or is it?

[Quemaqua]

Yay!  It'll never happen, but I hope this guy does some damage.  Fucking Valve.

[angrykeebler]

Hooray!

*realizes he bought DoD on STEAM*

oh shit..

[idolminds]

Yeah...shit. I bought DoD and Defcon. I did mark for Steam to not remember my credit card, but its still probably in their database. I wonder if we still even have that card, though.

[Pugnate]

Yea as much as I hate STEAM I wouldn't cheer this guy. This isn't just about STEAM.

[idolminds]

Apparently the guy just hacked the CyberCafe section of Steam. Valve keeps the cafe credit cards on file, but not individual users. So we're all safe. Apparently.

[Cobra951]

Yay!  It'll never happen, but I hope this guy does some damage.  Fucking Valve.

 

[idolminds]

Hey, want to hate on Steam some more! Click here!

Yes, if you have Win98/ME you will no longer be able to run Steam after June 30th unless you update your OS! We updated so now you have to go spend more money to keep playing the games you already bought from us despite the fact that they worked fine yesterday!

[MysterD]

Hey, want to hate on Steam some more! Click here!

Yes, if you have Win98/ME you will no longer be able to run Steam after June 30th unless you update your OS! We updated so now you have to go spend more money to keep playing the games you already bought from us despite the fact that they worked fine yesterday!

I'm sure that if you likely own a game that is on Steam, given how many of the game requirements are for those games, you probably have Win 2000 or XP, at the very least....

Though, yeah -- there's a good reason (out of 1,000 good reasons) to hate Steam; forcing subscribers to update the OS and the game version itself just to play a freakin' game. Even more so, I'd hate it if it is a SP-based game.

I've said this before, but I don't believe any SP (Single Player) games should actually FORCE Steam upon you, since you really should never need Steam (an Internet Connection) for an SP game that YOU buy on CD/DVD. Hence single player -- you are suppose to play this ALONE. END of story.

[PyroMenace]

This is just another hoax to delay Episode 2 further. Fuckers.

[Xessive]

If somebody steals my credit card info I hope they make a payment.

[Quemaqua]

Valve needs to rot in hell for eternity.

[scottws]

If somebody steals my credit card info I hope they make a payment.

Hahaha!  Nice!