Saturday, November 12, 2011

Now It's Steam's Turn

Valve Software's "Steam" service was hacked recently.  The database that the hackers gained access to contained sensitive information such as usernames, billing addresses, salted password hashes and encrypted credit card details, but it is unknown if this information was taken and/or the encryption compromised.

The next in a long line of breached online/cloud services, I'd strongly recommend Steam users check their credit card statements and make sure they change any passwords they have - preferably using passphrases, which if chosen well are significantly harder to crack.  I'd also strongly suggest regular passphrase changes for any sites that contain sensitive information and using different passphrases on every such site.

I've just checked and I currently have 684 passphrases that I have stored here, the vast (vast) majority of which are unique.  There's no way I could ever remember these, so I use Roboform to store these.  There's also LastPass, KeePass and other password storing applications out there, but I've found RoboForm to be by far the best.  Just make sure you use an appropriately secure passphrase to protect the application you store your passwords in!  :)

Regards,

The Outspoken Wookie

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