Valve's Steam platform hosts thousands of games on a variety of themes. As well as games with consignment partners or Steam as an intermediary to sell copyright.
Vulnerabilities are found in the network library used by Steam, known as Steam Sockets. The library was provided as part of the third-party game developer toolkit, and vulnerabilities were found on both the Steam server and on its backup machine, installed on your PC. player.
Check Point said it shared its findings with Valve in September. After three weeks, the fixes were moved to other Valve games. To fix the bug, Steam platform gamers are required to install Valve updates before they can launch the game.
Valve has informed Check Point Research that it has notified third-party game developers of the Steam platform of the vulnerabilities, Check Point said.
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| Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay |
How is the Game attack on the Steam platform?
If Steam has not been patched, Hackers may have used the security bug to crash a remote opponent's playing game application and potentially hijack the player's computer and take over all of the computers. is connected to a third-party game server. Popular games on Steam include Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Dota2, and Half-Life.The security firm said an attack was triggered by sending malicious packets to a rival gamer without any interaction from the rival gamer. Hackers may have forced third-party game servers to take over all connected gamers without any of them realizing.
"If exploited, these flaws trigger a variety of attacks," said Check Point. “For example, Hackers could crash the opponent's game application from a distance to force a win or even perform 'give up nuclear rage' and crash the Valve game server to finish the game completely. full. Even more likely to cause more damage, the hacker can hijack a remote third-party game server to execute arbitrary code. "
Eyal Itkin, a security researcher with Check Point, said when Game Online hit an all-time high during the coronavirus pandemic, making them a lucrative prey for hackers.
"With millions of people currently playing Online Games, even the tiniest security issue can be a serious concern for game companies and gamer's privacy," Itkin said. "Through the vulnerabilities we found, Hackers could have hijacked hundreds of thousands of gamers' computers every day, with the victim completely blind."
Other attack scenarios include Game Online vandalism, where Hackers can crash the server any time they want, forcing the game to stop for all gamers at once, Itkin said.
How to be safe from Hackers
Popular online platforms are a top target for hackers. "Whenever you have millions of users logged into the same place, the chances of being hacked are many times higher," said Check Point.With the skyrocketing popularity and the massive use of Online Games during the coronavirus pandemic, the gaming industry should be under scrutiny, as the risk is very real and the impact could be severe. "Gamers should keep an eye out for any games downloaded before September of this year."
Steam platform gamers and third-party gamers are the two types of users affected. Valve's users playing games through Steam have been protected through the fix, if from September until now you have not updated Steam quickly download the patch through the automatic update mode.
Check Point says Valve updates will block the game's launch. However, users of third-party games should check that updates have been received on their computers in recent months. If not, you'll need to contact the game developers to check when an update will be released.